Starchild
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: In a world divided between the nations of men and the nations of "beasts," the human powers take the race for dominance to the next frontier- outer space. Humanity places its hopes- and bets- on thirteen young pilots... or pawns . Space Race AU.
1. The Second Sun

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter One: The Second Sun_

Two suns marked the dawn- one to the east, a pale disk distorted by a low-hanging haze, the other in the west, brilliant orange and surrounded by a roiling ball of vapor as it crossed the sky with phenomenal speed. Eirika felt the vibrations of the launch in her breast as the Ashera-class rocket ascended on its test flight. The largest, grandest thing that mankind had designed, the Ashera rocket could- _would__- _carry humans to another world.

In two weeks' time, a rocket just like it would be carrying her to space, carrying her high enough above the Terran surface that she would be able to look down and see the world as a sphere out her window. The concept of it, even now, seemed utterly fanciful, something out of a story book. A flying tower that rose toward Luna on a pillar of thunder and flame? Not likely. Not even possible. And yet...

Eirika watched until the test rocket had passed completely out of sight, leaving its vapor trail to mark the Jehannan sky.

-x-

Security saluted Captain Sieglinde as she re-entered the pilot dormitory of Star City. Eirika might not be a _true _"star-sailor" yet, but Pilot 012 of the Human Spaceflight Programme was still accorded the place in society that had once been given to royalty. A chauffeured car to take her around Star City, a secretary to handle her affairs, a military escort if she had to venture to the capital or elsewhere... and a "palace" of sorts to live in, with others of her kind.

"You went to see the launch?" asked Pilot 009 as they ate breakfast together. "I don't bother anymore."

"Well, you're so busy now I can't blame you," Eirika said as she moved the "nut cubes" around on her plate. It was the first day of the diet that was supposed to acclimate her to the rations she'd eat on the mission, and she cast a slightly envious eye at Pilot 009's omelette and sausage. "All the tours and interviews..."

Pilot 009 shrugged.

"I'd rather go back to being anonymous. If I could just train, and fly, and not worry about the rest of it... I'd go back in time in a heartbeat."

Eirika said nothing to this, though a warning to the other pilot was on the tip of her tongue. The sentiment bordered on... well, not unpatriotic, but not _right_ for a member of the Programme. It was the sort of thing that might possibly get one passed over when the time came to select a crew for the first lunar mission. What was it the Premier had said to them in his last address?

_All the hopes of humanity are invested in you, our voyagers to the stars..._

And to fulfill that hope didn't just mean sitting on top of a rocket and being hurled into space. If Eirika didn't believe that fully, she wouldn't be sitting here in a climate-controlled bubble on the Jehannan steppes, staring down a plate of nut cubes and fruit bites.

"You'll do fine with all that, I'm sure of it," the other pilot was saying of the life that awaited Eirika on the other side of the mission. "We can all tell that you'll be a natural out there under the lights."

There was not a hint of jealousy in her voice- it was a simple expression of fact. Eirika smiled then at the other pilot.

"Thank you, Lyn. I'm looking forward to it, I really am."

-x-

The five-rayed design of the dormitory reminded Eirika of ancient temples, like the holy site of Valni in Frelia. It was a temple, in a sense- only the icons being worshiped were the same humans who happened to live and work in Star City. The triumphs of the Programme were commemorated in paint and bronze all throughout the atrium, just as they were through the whole of the launch complex. Eirika passed a miniature Pegasus rocket and an enlarged photograph of the Pilot 002 on his spacewalk as she walked to the escalator that went to the quarters of female pilots. There were no paintings or sculptures to commemorate any of her triumphs, as she hadn't yet achieved anything.

As Eirika ascended the escalator, the litany of humanity's triumphs played through her head yet again.

_Mission Starlight: First human spaceflight_

_Mission Nova: First two-person crew, first spacewalk_

_Mission Meteor/Mission Valkyrie: First rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft_

_Mission Hope: Flight endurance record_

_Mission Aureola: First three-person crew, first two-person spacewalk_

She tried very hard not to think of the record set by the _Astra_ mission.

_First pilot killed in the course of duty._

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: Um, yeah. _Fire Emblem_ meets the Space Race. So, the premise of this is that this is an All One World FE planet, with a Cold War going on with an alliance of human nations facing off against an "empire" of the dragons and their laguz allies. Both sides are devoting massive resources to getting to the moon- not just to show one another what for, and not just because it's there. Hotshot pilot Ephraim wants to be the first human on the moon, while his sister and fellow pilot Eirika is more into the inspirational side of the Programme. And much trouble ensues, oh yes.

For what it's worth, the Human Spaceflight Programme here is based as much off the Soviet moon-shot effort as it is the U.S.A. one.


	2. Course Correction

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Two_: _Course Correction_

Eirika spent three hours a day in her office. In theory, she was studying her flight plan and task lists for the mission, or looking over training materials. In practice, she didn't have a great deal to do right now. Her brother Ephraim insisted on keeping up with his flight training- as senior pilot on the _Gemstone_ mission, he wanted to be able to take immediate command of their craft if the automated controls were to fail. Less was expected of Eirika; she had to keep up her physical training in the great cylindrical pool so as to be ready for her spacewalk, but no one seemed to think it a good idea to put her in the seat of a fighter jet now, not with the mission twelve days away.

The most important thing on her desk at present was a memo from General Selena's office.

_To: All Pilots_

_Subject: Use of ground fleet vehicles_

_In order to ensure the most efficient allocation of ground fleet vehicles, Fleet-17 through Fleet-19 are reserved for the use of Pilots 001, 002, and 003. Fleet-20 through Fleet-27 may be utilized by all pilots in the corps. In the event of a pilot conflict over vehicle allocation, a refereed meeting is to be held._

Eirika set the memo aside. She had a good idea of which of the junior pilots had commandeered Fleet-18 for a joyride, and it wasn't a mistake she planned to make herself. She was plowing her way through a manual on the ventilation systems of the Falcon II capsule when the red light on her desk phone began to pulse.

_Pilot 012, report immediately to the Head Office_.

Fortunately, Fleet-22 was at her disposal and she didn't have to break protocol to get to this emergency meeting in a timely manner. Her brother was already waiting there in his worn leather flight jacket; his mussed hair showed just how recently he'd been wearing his helmet. Generals Mycen and Duessel were both in the room as well, which could only mean this matter was of the gravest importance. Was the mission to be cancelled?

Eirika sat beside her brother, unable to quell the fluttery feeling in her stomach. To her surprise, both generals yielded the floor to the young engineer who stood at the head of the room, rattling a piece of chalk in his palm.

Chief Engineer Innes, designer of the Falcon line of space capsules, could have passed for a jet pilot himself, and he was on full display now with his perfect bearing and crisp diction. It was common knowledge in the pilot corps that Innes wanted to be the first engineer among the "star sailors," and Eirika could not help but recall this as she watched Innes sketch out trajectory lines on the chalkboard.

The flight objectives of _Gemstone_ were to change, effective immediately, he said. The mission would no longer be a high-altitude rendezvous and docking of the Falcon II craft with the buglike lunar lander. The _Gemstone _objective was now to put the manned Falcon II capsule into lunar orbit, _without_ the lander. The capsule would return to Terra after a few lunar orbits, and there was still a possibility of a brief docking excursion using a dummy vehicle as a target if one could be launched in the course of the mission. Any questions? No? Good.

As Eirika listened, she could only think that the rumors of the lunar lander not being flight-ready must be true. At least her spacewalk training wasn't entirely wasted, as she might still perform her walk with the dummy vehicle...

Ephraim had quite a different reaction to this abrupt and undebatable change in the mission plans. His eyes gleamed with a pale blue light as he grinned at her from beneath his untidy hair.

"We're going to the moon," he said, and the mixture of awe and satisfaction in his voice caused Eirika to stop her mundane thoughts of docking exercise and wonder at the both of them.

**To Be Continued...**

Author's Notes: Yay, Ephraim. In a flight jacket.


	3. Happy Thoughts

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Three: Happy Thoughts_

Eirika always lost at table tennis when she played against Lyn. The Elibean pilot was so quick on her feet that she seemed be everywhere at once, and the the ball went whizzing past Eirika's face more often than it contacted her paddle. She was chasing the ball down the pilots' recreation den when the doors to the den slid open, giving the ball a chance to escape into the hallway.

"Oh! I'm sorry." The sandaled foot of Pilot 003 blocked the ball.

Both Eirika and Lyn automatically saluted the senior pilot. Lyn had spent far longer in space, and Eirika's mission promised to be an astonishing milestone for the Programme, but deference to the Original Three was so ingrained in the pilot corps that even unruly Pilot 010 responded automatically to the sight of any of the trio.

"No, I'm sorry, Cellica. Let me get that."

Eirika cast a concerned glance at Cellica's midsection before she scooped up the ball. Nobody anywhere in the Programme wanted to place the world's first "space baby" in any danger. Not when Premier Sephiran himself had hailed the union of Pilots 002 and 003 as proof of the success and virtue of the Human Spaceflight Programme. Everyone from the generals and commanders to the premier took quite the keen interest in the personal lives of their pilots, and Cellica had come to see them for this very reason.

"There's to be an engagement party tomorrow night for Pilot 006," Cellica said, in the sweet, musical voice that captivated the free peoples of the world when they heard it beamed down from orbit. "All pilots in the area are requested to attend if they are not on assignment."

"We'll be there," Lyn said. "Even if I have to drag Hector out of the cockpit."

-x-

True to her word, Pilot 009 managed to get her Elibean comrade to the event, for all that Hector claimed he hated fancy parties with diplomats and the military brass. Eirika was less successful in getting her equally ceremony-averse brother to attend. Training, Ephraim said, was paramount. He couldn't let himself go with the mission six days away. All the other pilots were present to congratulate Pilot 006 on his upcoming marriage to Nanna Finnsdottir- except 001, who had the very good excuse of being on a goodwill tour of the Eastern Islands. Eirika hoped her brother's absence wouldn't be used as a reason to replace him on the _Gemstone_ mission, and she glanced at the other junior pilots- 013 and 014, both in training for the _Dawn _mission- and wondered if they were thinking the same thing.

Didn't Ephraim realize that events like these were as much a part of the life of a "star-sailor" as was flying a fighter jet? He had to understand it on some level; he simply didn't _want_ to.

Eirika tried to push these worries away and concentrate on goodwill and happiness for the newly-engaged couple. Major Leaf Faris was a handsome young man, notable among the pilots for his brown hair and eyes, and he and blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nanna looked perfect together. And yet, there was a hint of shadow to the festivities; all present knew that Leaf had suffered terribly from space-sickness during the _Valkyrie _mission, and while he hadn't been officially grounded, his chances of ever going into space again were slim indeed.

Chief Engineer Finn was there as well, and Eirika made sure to congratulate the rocket designer on his daughter's engagement. Rumor had it that the Programme intended to reward Finn for his years of work on the Pegasus rockets by granting him a seat on an upcoming mission; this rumor was not well received by the current group of pilots.

"He's so old," whispered Lyn.

"He's... thirty-six?"

"It's _hard_ to work up there. Once you come down again, you don't feel right for days. How would he survive two weeks in the capsule?"

The Chief Engineer looked fit, to be sure- trim and slender, with good color- but his age showed in the lines around the his mouth and eyes. Eirika knew he'd lost friends, dear ones, in the pursuit of the moon, lost them in launchpad explosions and jet accidents. He'd been closely involved with the _Astra_ mission and the loss of Pilot 004 had hit Finn hard; he'd been sent on an enforced forty-day "vacation" afterward.

Did he look forward at all to his supposed future as one of the star-sailors?

Eirika looked again at happy couple- so young, so attractive, with so much before them in life. Perhaps everything was well-aligned for them after all. If Leaf never left Terra's surface again, at least it meant that Nanna wouldn't be left a young widow.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: Remember, this is a cold war of the humans ("free peoples") against the dragons and their "beast" (laguz) allies. If Sephiran is the premier of the human government, something very weird is going on.

Finn's role here is somewhat based on the real-life engineer-cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov. And the matchmaking going on in the pilot corps has a real-life counterpart in the marriage of Valentina Tereshkova and Andrian Nikolayev, which allegedly was as much about propaganda as romance. So, yes, Eirika as a single female pilot is going to have a romance angle inflicted on her via the plot.


	4. A Hole in the Sky

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Four: A Hole in the Sky_

The _Gemstone _mission was scheduled to launch at precisely 7:52 in the morning. Eirika and Ephraim were strapped into their seats and sealed off from the rest of the world a good two hours in advance. Sitting there atop the mighty Ashera rocket with nothing to do gave Eirika the time to reflect and worry on what would happen when the fires inside the rocket's engines were finally lit. Everyone who'd ridden one of the Pegasus 1B rockets said it was an unsettling experience; the rocket leapt off the pad with a force that caused the pilots inside to feel _eight times_ the force of normal gravity during flight. The engineers promised the Ashera rocket was more advanced and wouldn't be nearly as bad, but up to this point, no one could really say for certain...

"_Ignition_."

Eirika sensed no noise, no vibration, just a sense of _power_ issuing from somewhere far below her. When she did hear the rumble of the engines, it seemed distant, like peals of thunder coming from somewhere beyond the horizon. Yet the thunder moved closer, and closer still, and finally the roar was in Eirika's ears and she felt a definite _jolt_ as the rocket rose from its launchpad.

The voice coming across her headset confirmed what her body already knew.

"_Liftoff_."

"We're up and running," Ephraim said as he glanced at the mission clock embedded in their control panel. As first words on a mission went, it didn't have the joy and exhilaration of "Let's go!" from the _Starlight_ mission, but Eirika heard the undercurrent of glee in her brother's voice regardless.

Eirika said nothing. She felt like a bird in the mouth of a frenzied dog as she was jerked from side to side in her harness by the motions of the rocket. The sound, the violence, were almost overwhelming. She looked down at the handle on the control panel that served as their escape if the Ashera went "angry" and decided to kill its human passengers. Would Ephraim even hear the command to eject if ground control ordered it? _Would he _want_ to hear it?_

Ten seconds, twenty, thirty, forty... and then there was quiet again, as the Ashera sailed past the sound barrier.

"_Gemstone, all looks good_," came the voice through the headset.

"Roger that, it's a smooth ride now," said Ephraim, and even through the bubble of his helmet he was obviously smiling.

"Many thanks to the designers," Eirika called out.

It wasn't pleasant- first Eirika felt her limbs turn to dead weight as the force of three and then four Gs pressed upon them. Then, when the spent bottom stage of the rocket dropped away they had another jolt, one that made Eirika think she was about to be catapulted through the control panel. But the harnesses held fast, and their spacecraft withstood all the shocks.

And then, as the protective cover over the Falcon II capsule fell away, Eirika saw sunlight and a glimpse of blue out the cabin window- not the blue skies of a sunny day on Terra, but the luminous blue of Terra itself.

-x-

They spent the first three hours of the flight circling Terra while the engineers back on the ground made sure that everything in the spacecraft was functioning. Only then were they given the go-ahead to proceed where no human- no living being, as far as anyone knew- had ever been. Yet the ride didn't feel much different from the flight simulators now, and it was only when the Falcon II turned and Eirika saw the sphere of Terra framed perfectly in her window that she realized how truly distant she and Ephraim now were from everything familiar.

The great deserts of the world- Jehanna, Yied, the Missur Peninsula- showed as orange and brown through the streaming tops of the clouds. But the habitable regions of Terra, the forests and plains, were strangely colored, more of a blue-gray than a refreshing green. Eirika could not find her homeland of Renais; it didn't help that real countries weren't colored like a map!

By this time the pilots already dispensed with their bubble helmets and the other protective gear from the liftoff, and Eirika now decided it was time to get out of her bulky spacesuit. Once that was off and stowed away, and she was just in the pajama-like flightsuit, every weightless movement was a joy and a revelation. The few minutes of "weightlessness" she experienced in training jets were nothing compared to the freedom of having "up" and "down" being whatever Eirika wanted them to be at a given moment. She could poke around under the seats without discomfort, she could "stand" upside down in the cabin, she could tuck her body into a ball and tumble freely...

"Ooh."

And she could make herself sick. Her stomach lurched and her head spun. Eirika felt instantly guilty for her silly actions, and she automatically turned to her brother, now also free of his spacesuit, for support.

He wasn't having such an easy time, either.

"Okay, not good," Ephraim said as the color in his face altered. "Focus your eyes on one spot and move _very slowly_. It's like having the spins when you're drunk."

Eirika never had been, but she took her brother's word for it, and that did seem to help. She tied back her hair so it wasn't floating around as a distraction and decided to focus on being a pilot and not a zero-G gymnast.

Their bodies had a lot of adjusting to do. Sleeping wasn't easy, either; the sleeping bag was designed for someone the size of Ephraim, or Hector, and Eirika felt lost in it. Since everything floated, there was no sensation of having her head against a pillow, no security of having a blanket wrapped tightly around her. Her mind didn't know what to make of it all, and when she did sleep, she had dreams of falling, falling into nothing.

-x-

As it was Ephraim's job to guide the spacecraft- to the extent the automated controls would allow- it fell to Eirika to relay the descriptions of their experiences back to Terra. She provided updates on how the planet appeared as it grew smaller and smaller through the window. What were the colors, the textures? She took photographs, but each moment she gazed at the world through the camera was a moment she wasn't seeing Terra with her own eyes, and that gave her a small sense of loss.

Meanwhile, the moon was out there in front of them, and it seemed to Eirika and Ephraim both that they could _sense_ it hanging there in the darkness before either of them saw it. They could only see a narrow view of space at a time thanks to the small cabin windows, and that meant that they weren't able to see Luna getting larger in front of them while Terra receded behind them.

Ephraim grew edgy; Eirika noticed a familiar steely gleam in his eyes, and she knew it was because they were coming up to a critical moment in their spaceflight. They were going to lose radio contact with Terra as they slipped around the moon, and the mission engineers had calculated the moment of lost contact right to the second. If everything was right, if they were truly on course, their headsets would turn to static at precisely that moment.

If not...

They were sixty-nine hours, two minutes, and seven seconds into the flight when Eirika's headset began to crackle in her ears.

"It worked," she said, and felt a wave of relief and surprise.

"Maybe they turned off the signal," Ephraim said. He was joking, of course, but then Eirika knew she really wouldn't feel right until they had the signal back again.

As the Falcon II passed into the shadow of the moon, they were plunged into a darkness that was almost tangible. Out one window, Eirika saw so many stars she couldn't recognize any of them. Out the other window, there was a strange starless void, a dark presence... a hole.

It was another moment training hadn't prepared her for. Eirika felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck and wondered how anyone back on Terra would possibly believe them.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: While the Soviet space program is, as I've said, a major inspiration for this, specific mission details for _Gemstone_ are drawn from the U.S. Apollo VIII mission (the Soviets never had a manned lunar flight of any kind). The books _Lost Moon_ by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger and _A Man on the Moon _by Andrew Chaikin were my primary sources for this.

FYI, "Let's go!" (also translated as "Let's ride!" or "Off we go!") is what Yuri Gagarin said during the launch of Vostok 1- the first human spaceflight on our planet Earth for those of you playing along at home. This just so happens to be the catchphrase of the appropriate _Fire Emblem_ character. History is a funny thing. )


	5. The Unknown Moon

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Five: The Unknown Moon_

For as long as she could remember, Eirika had looked up at Luna with a sense of curiosity. In childhood she became familiar with the shadowed regions that made up the face of the Moon Maiden, a face that seemed gentle at times, deeply sorrowful at others. Even when she learned that the eyes of the Moon Maiden were thought to be nothing more than dark plains of barren rock, she still fancied that she sensed _something_- a personality- in Luna.

What Eirika saw now was not the moon she knew- not a familiar face, not the topography of dark lowlands and pale mountain ranges that she recalled from lunar maps. This was an alien landscape that spoke of aeons of violence, a vista of craters upon craters. Eirika saw craters that must surely be the size of the island of Valencia, craters that might well be as large as Renais, as large as any nation on the continent of Magvel. It was stark, horrifying, eerie, and oddly beautiful, its beauty magnified by the knowledge that she and Ephraim were the first humans ever to _see_ this sight with their own eyes.

"Get the camera," Ephraim whispered. In this stillness on the far side of Luna, it seemed almost wrong to speak normally.

She began to take picture after picture as the newly-revealed landscape slid beneath them. Adjectives that meant "black," "white," and "gray" filled Eirika's head, for there seemed to be no color at all in the world out her window. No color, no life, no feathery clouds or glistening water. Nothing but an endless collection of scars, more forbidding than the most barren stretches of Jehanna by orders of magnitude. Did it even make sense to place a human, a pair of humans, in the middle of such a hostile place?

"It looks like they had the war to end all wars up here," Ephraim noted from behind her.

And then Eirika noticed a fragile wisp of blue and white and green just above Luna's horizon- a crescent Terra, suspended in the dark above the rim of its long-dead moon.

"It's so _small_."

Everything that they knew and loved was on that planet, and yet Eirika could lift up her hand and block it out, all of it- the oceans and mountains and three billion people- with only her thumb. The vulnerability of the planet, of life, struck her then, and it was enough to bring a tight feeling to her chest and throat. Eirika brought the world into focus and kept taking pictures.

-x-

"Get on out there, sister."

Eirika, encased once more in her spacesuit, prepared to embark on the spacewalk she'd been given as a last-minute change in mission objectives. Earlier spacewalks had tested the ability of a pilot to work in zero gravity- with admittedly mixed results. Eirika had only to take another round of photographs, lunar landscapes undimmed by the small, fogged windows of the spacecraft. She would bob along, connected to the craft by a tether, while Ephraim cruised alone in the Falcon II.

She didn't _need_ her brother's encouragement to do her work- it was her duty, after all- but that certainly helped. Eirika stepped into the airless, weightless void. As she raised the color camera, she felt again a pang of dismay that she would see so much of that ugly-beautiful landscape through it and not with her eyes. A robot could have taken pictures if that were the only goal.

"I wish I knew how to paint," she muttered to herself, not caring if her words reached Ephraim or the ground crew. "I'd _paint_ this." She'd known a painter once, an upperclassman in flight school...

Eirika forced herself back on task, faithfully logging all these previously unseen, unnamed craters for the benefit of science. When the crescent Terra appeared again at the lunar horizon, she photographed that, too. Terra looked so serene; there were no continents marked in blue to show the Free Nations, nothing marked in red to show the Loptos Empire. It was all one swirling marble, the only thing of color in the darkness.

Sweat began to bead inside of her helmet. The drops floated, like little balls of crystal...

"_Pilot Oh-Twelve, time to call it a day._ "

_Do I have to?_

That was the thought in her head. All the world heard was a prompt "Roger" as Pilot 012, her heart racing and her fingers sore, obeyed the order from ground control. When she was once more inside the spacecraft, Ephraim greeted her, and not with the thump on the back that one pilot might give another. He clasped her like a brother whose only sister had just accomplished something marvelous. And terrifying. Marvelously terrifying.

-x-

Eirika would have expected that, after orbiting Luna, the ride home and the remainder of their mission would be something of a letdown. She hadn't counted on the ship's computer failing, throwing up error after error in mid-journey. The computer was supposed to be the true brain of the ship, able to fly the spacecraft without a human pilot even placing a hand upon the controls. Yet now, its screen showed only strings of garbage numbers, blinking at them in a distress call.

"No problem. I'll take it from here." That was Ephraim the hard-nosed test pilot speaking, but Eirika again heard that note of glee in his voice at the challenge before them. And a challenge it was; if they plunged toward Terra at the wrong trajectory, it would be the end of them both. Come in too shallow, and they'd bounce off the atmosphere like a skipping stone on a lake. Come in too steep, and they'd be torn apart before they ever reached the ground. In unmanned tests, both fates had befallen more than a few Falcon capsules.

_And if the parachutes also decided to fail on them_...

"We'll be off-target for the landing, but we'll be alive," Ephraim assured her. The gleam in his eye now looked like pale fire. "Hold on, sister."

Already, Eirika could see flickers of light outside the window, Terra's atmosphere turned to glowing plasma by the force of their reentry. It looked almost like sunrise.

It was the wildest ride of their lives- pressed into their seats by crushing G-forces, first five and then six times Terra's normal gravity. Eirika felt as though a dragon were sitting atop her chest, and beside her Ephraim was grappling with the controls, hissing the substitute swear words that star-sailors were given to use in place of the unrestrained curses of a regular test pilot. Eirika didn't know how Ephraim managed to so much as lift his arms, but even after six days of weightlessness, her brother had the phenomenal strength needed to keep them on course- and the determination needed to keep his head together.

Outside the air was glowing white, like the aura of a saint. But the g-forces were lessening, and Eirika knew they were over the worst of it. There were only the parachutes left to account for...

Then came a _crack_, followed by a flutter of brilliant cloth visible at the very edge of the window. And then the radio, sputtering back to life- Eirika had nearly forgotten they'd lost contact with the ground control during the descent. She wanted to laugh, then, thinking of Ephraim saying "blast" and "crackers" instead of the words he wanted to use, when nobody but she could have heard them after all.

If the ride out to Luna had provided some jolts, those turned out to be not much at all compared with the force of their landing in the Rausten steppes. She was surprised the capsule didn't crack in two.

"Well, we're off course for sure," Ephraim was saying. "I hope there aren't wolves, but if there are, I do have a gun..."

The tears slipping down her face told Eirika that they were truly home.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Note: The pistol comment is not a joke. While U.S. astronauts in the pre-shuttle days came down in the ocean, cosmonauts came down on land, and wolves were indeed an issue.


	6. National Treasure

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Six_: _National Treasure _

The chauffeur opened the door for Eirika and stood by, frozen in deference, as she stepped out. That the chauffeur wore an plain uniform instead of dress finery, the vehicle was humble Fleet-22, and there were absolutely no photographers waiting for her, all came as a relief to her exhausted senses. Star City functioned just as it had before Pilot 012 made her public debut.

The four months that followed the _Gemstone_ mission made the mission itself seem like a relaxing vacation. From the moment she and Ephraim exited the capsule, cameras and microphones were thrust into their faces. First they were whisked back to Star City for a mission debriefing, then flown to the capital of the Magvel Union for a reception at Ivaldi Court, where Premier Sephiran presented them with the Hero of Freedom award. Then it was off to the National Assembly to receive lesser accolades, like the Star of Peace and the Order of Latona. At every stop, they encountered throngs of people waving both hand-lettered signs and mass-produced posters, and strangers called out their names.

Up to then, no one had even _known _the names of the eleventh and twelfth members of the pilot corps. None outside the Programme had- officially- known of their existence before _Gemstone_ reached orbit, but during the mission, the Programme's public relations machine had been steadily spinning. Their names were revealed for the first time to the public and their faces made instantly familiar via postage stamps and television broadcasts. And now, they belonged to everyone.

Eirika and Ephraim were packed off on a goodwill tour of the United Free Nations- all four continents. First to the Eastern Islands, where President Hardin presented them both with the Order of Liberation. Then westward to Valencia, where the assembly gave Eirika a special medal for Women's Achievement. Then to Elibe, to be acclaimed Heroes of the Republic. In one day, they had lunch with the governor of Lycia, dinner with the governor of Etruria, and finished up with a candlelit parade through the provincial capital of Bern.

Of course, it was not enough to simply be seen or to thank their gracious hosts for the honors. They must bear witness to the _significance _of the Programme, bear witness to the _reason_ that the free peoples of Terra reached lunar orbit before the Loptos Empire, for all the Empire's claims of advanced technology and superior knowledge. They must at all times be exemplars of human virtues- hard work, honesty, patriotism, and sound morals. They must remember, at all times, that the adulation was not for them as individuals, but instead belonged to those chosen to serve the free peoples.

Eirika found herself the spokeswoman more often than not. Ephraim mixed up his notes, addressed a crowd of Sofians as "people of Rigel," and let slip that the Programme was going to send a robotic probe to Luna to retrieve some soil samples. By the time they reached Elibe, his role consisted mostly of looking like a heroic space pilot and escorting Eirika through crowds.

"They love you, anyway," he said to her, not at all bothered by the reprimand he'd received for going "off message" in public. His mind was already on the flight simulators back at Star City.

Finally, it was home to Magvel for the most ecstatic reception of anywhere they'd been. After so many missions bearing foreign pilots to the stars, Magvel- keystone of the UFN and heart of the Human Spaceflight Programme- finally had a pair of native spacefarers to celebrate. When Eirika, a crown of roses on her head, was carried through the streets of the capital of Renais, set upon a dais and proclaimed Queen of Luna, she felt as though she no longer even _was_ the person named Eirika, but instead had become something else, an abstraction of hope and inspiration. Her body might be grounded again, but a part of her being was still up there in the star-spangled blackness. If she didn't have her brother there, to remind who of who they both were, and always had been...

The people of Magvel didn't care that Eirika and Ephraim were- already!- no longer the Programme's newest heroes. While they were in Elibe, the _Dawn _mission had gone up and returned, "all mission objectives achieved." Now there were four humans living who had seen the far side of Luna in its tortured glory. But the pilots named Ike and Micaiah would receive no tribute from their homeland, not with the continent of Tellius serving as one of the pillars of the Loptos Empire. And Magvel, which gave a muted reception to other refugee pilots, withheld its highest honors from the _Dawn_ crew.

The second mission to orbit the moon was... second. Now, nothing less than a landing, than a human footprint on the lunar surface, would generate such acclaim.

-x-

But now she was home. She was merely Pilot 012, one among equals, and not Lunar Queen Eirika. Though her photo of a crescent Terra now graced the walls of the dormitory atrium, inside the walls of Star City no one wanted her autograph.

As Eirika crossed the atrium she passed another in the pilot corps, headed in the opposite direction with a tray of the cafeteria's daily offerings balanced in his hands. He wore the same bluish-gray jumpsuit they all used when on duty, utilitarian and unadorned save for the three-digit number embroidered above the heart.

_001_

Eirika halted, and her hand automatically snapped upward in a hasty salute. Pilot 001 stopped as well, and the plates on his tray rattled.

"Congratulations," he said, and showed her a smile that Eirika knew from television before she'd even been accepted into the pilot corps.

"It was my honor to serve," she said, supplying the response made automatic through practice.

They exchanged a few sentences- he asked her about the spacewalk and the manual landing, and she gave answers on a level that another pilot, as opposed to an interviewer or diplomat, would understand. Through the conversation Eirika felt slightly distracted, as she often did when confronted by the solitary pilot from the Eastern Islands. He was so far above her in the pecking order that it felt wrong to even address him by name, and she had to force herself to say "Marth" instead of "Pilot 001" when they went their separate ways. Of all the pilots, he was the least known to her, in part because he was rarely ever _at_ Star City. It was whispered- and Eirika saw no reason to disbelieve it- that after the _Astra_ disaster, the Programme commanders had decided that their most famous face could not be exposed to the risk of another mission, and so Marth was not a fixture at the airstrip or at the flight simulators. He was usually doing what Eirika herself had just been doing- bouncing through the United Free Nations as the embodiment of humanity's most astonishing achievements.

What was it like, she wondered, to be the most famous person in the world? She'd had a taste, however briefly, of a life that consisted of being put on display in one city after another. A life where people tried to take the buttons from her jacket as keepsakes, where cuttings of her hair had the value of gold, where hundreds of people might cluster outside her hotel in hopes that she'd peek out the window and wave at them.

And yet, Eirika didn't expect her time in the spotlight to last, however high the praise for her, and for Ephraim, was at that moment. Once a human had actually set foot upon another world, merely flying around it wouldn't be so special. The _Gemstone_ mission was but a stepping-stone to something greater, and the _Dawn _mission had, in a technical sense, already bested it, just as every mission had built upon the achievements of those that came before. Really, did the people of distant Elibe remember which pilot flew in _Meteor _and which had _Valkyrie_? Did the Valencians, who held the _Nova_ mission in their hearts, remember what _Hope_ achieved as opposed to _Aureole_?

Only one mission resonated equally around the world. Others might fly higher and faster, might spend weeks or months in space instead of a few hours, might accomplish feats undreamed of when the _Starlight_ mission took flight. Many might share in the glory of the Programme... but only one of them would ever, would always, be the first.

And only one other, the first human to step onto the alien land of Luna, would understand exactly what that meant.

It had never occurred to Eirika to hope that she might be the first to walk on the moon. That destiny, in her mind, belonged to Ephraim, if all the cards went in their favor. So she never had contemplated the price of being first- not until becoming one of the _Gemstone_ twins had transformed her from state secret into public exhibit.

Eirika still hoped, deep in her heart, that her brother would bear the honor of being First Upon Luna. Now she hoped, just as fervently, that she would _not_.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's note: Oh, hi, it's a plot complication.


	7. Rocks and Hard Questions

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Seven: Rocks and Hard Questions_

Limestone. Sandstone. Shale. Schist. A knob of ancient granite from the era before life. Eirika jotted these findings down in her field notebook as she trudged down Hamill Canyon in the company of the other female pilots. Lyn sang a snatch of some Elibean song as she worked, Cellica spent an hour sketching a band of fossil shells embedded in one limestone ribbon, and Micaiah coped with a small yellow bird that wanted very much to ride upon her shoulder. Around them, the other pilots worked in groups of two and three as they tried to unravel the mysteries of Terran geology.

Shortly after the _Dawn_ mission, a certain... tension... worked its way through the Human Spaceflight Programme. Eirika expected to be sent abroad again for public relations once she realized there were no new missions on the timetable. Instead, she experienced an abrupt gear-shift in the training program as the entire pilot corps- all thirteen of them- entered a phase of intensive simulations and academic lessons. They flew helicopters to better master the lunar lander, that strange spindle-legged craft unlike anything designed to fly in Terra's atmosphere. They spent many hours "working" under water to prepare for the experience of lunar gravity. They were immersed in astronomy, geology, chemistry and engineering. And, more than ever before, they did these things together- living, eating, flying, studying. General Duessel sent them on hunting and fishing trips to bolster group solidarity. Their field outings sometimes had the feeling of a camping excursion; together, like a parade of jumpsuited goslings, they trooped down to the great university at Grado City, where a lugubrious young professor let them into his planetarium to study the stars. Together, they went to Hamill Canyon to peer into the geological mysteries of Terra's layered crust.

That was the idea, anyway. As Eirika glanced down the hill, she saw her brother in the company of Pilots 008 and 010. They were tossing rocks at one another.

-x-

After the breakneck pace of the previous three years, this long pause in the flight schedule made them all a little uncomfortable. Still, Eirika believed it was likely for the best that no one was being rushed into flight. Just as the failure of the _Gemstone_ computer showed the automated controls were fallible, the _Dawn_ mission uncovered a number of problems with the lunar lander, issues that never made it into the rosy press releases that issued from the Programme office. Eirika sensed the apprehension that ran through the Programme from the highest levels to the lowest, from the generals to the ground technicians. The equipment wasn't ready. The pilots might not be ready. And, it was said, the Loptos Empire had begun test flights of a truly massive rocket, one as large as the Ashera. One capable of sending a crew to Luna. A very non-human crew.

Eirika tried to imagine a spacecraft packed with dragons or lions or wolves wearing spacesuits. What sort of boots, of gloves, would they use? How did they fit pointed ears inside helmets... and where did their tails go? She knew some of the Tellian laguz had wings; surely there was no way to send them into space safely. Unless the Empire did possess truly astounding technology...

Not that there was much time for silly speculation about what the Lopts were doing. The pilots had their own crew assignments to worry about. General Mycen had the final say on crew selections (unless the Premier overruled him), and Mycen kept them guessing. He gave his pilots the impression that any and all of them were contenders for the first lunar-landing mission, and that all of them _must _be ready for that mission if called to it. This uncertainty as to their futures led to soul-searching amongst the individual pilots... and no small amount of collective tension. Only one of them, after all, would be the first moonwalker. Some might never get there at all.

So, even as they catalogued the rocks of Hamill Canyon, Eirika's companions spent a great deal of time eyeing the male pilots- not out of simple desire (except perhaps in the case of Cellica and her husband Alm), but to gauge each young man's chances of setting foot upon Luna. There was poor Leaf, gamely sorting through his samples despite the taint of space-sickness on his record. Alongside him was Pilot 005; Celice was known for his flamboyant long hair and for turning in the better performance on the _Meteor/Valkyrie_ mission. Nearby worked the oddly compatible pair of Pilots 002 and 013. Alm and Ike had strong piloting skills and excellent stamina, which might set them in good stead for long-duration missions that involved work on the lunar surface. But was it enough to make either of them the first?

Another "matched" pair of pilots sat beyond them- 001 and 007, their heads bent over their rock piles in similar attitudes of diligence. Both, Eirika thought, were question marks. That Marth was participating in the training at all suggested that, perhaps, he wasn't grounded for "reasons of state," but his total time in space still amounted to four-plus hours in a capsule he'd never actually _flown_. As for Roy, he had the reputation for being most psychologically stable of the pilots, a reputation he'd earned by spending two weeks alone on the _Hope_ mission without going insane, but he was the youngest of the corps and didn't appear to have reached his full potential yet. He could, perhaps, stand to wait a few years for his chance at Luna.

The trio of 008, 010, and 011 completed the number of male pilots, and they were busy with their mock rock fight. One stray rock landed near the pile belonging to Pilot 013, who glanced at the intrusion briefly, then ignored it with an expression that could fairly be called stonelike.

"Oh, Ike," Lyn said under her breath. "What did the psychologists say when they got done with him? '_Nobody's that uncomplicated!_'"

Cellica and Eirika both laughed softly with Lyn. Micaiah just smiled a little.

Eirika wondered about her own peers. Cellica, she thought, would never receive a lunar assignment, not with the possibility that some mishap would leave her little daughter without a mother. Cellica's contribution was to be the first female in space, and that was that. Lyn was also questionable; she'd done well on the _Aureole_ mission, but she'd received more than a few reprimands for gaffes at public events. As for Micaiah...

Eirika surreptitiously studied the pilot from Tellius. Micaiah, like Eirika, had been dubbed "Moon Maiden" by the world's press after her mission, and she looked the part with her silvery-fair hair. Her pale beauty was coupled with an air of remoteness... of secrecy. Eirika could not say they were friends, as she always had the sense that Micaiah was holding something back. But she was a skilled pilot, and already had a degree in chemistry when she entered the Programme, _and_ Micaiah had turned in a solid performance on the _Dawn_ mission. Yes, of the three, Micaiah was the most likely to reach the moon.

Eirika pictured a lunar crew consisting of- just for fancy's sake- her brother, Micaiah, and one other. Eliwood, she though, was another strong contender. Pilot 008 was not the most skilled flier among them, but he was a steady one, and he would lend a balancing presence to a crew. He'd managed to keep his more colorful subordinates in line as _Aureole_'s commander, after all. Yes, thought Eirika, it would make a solid team. Ephraim, Eliwood, Micaiah.

-x-

Geology lessons made a refreshing break from the paperwork that awaited Eirika back in her office at Star City. Said paperwork had increased exponentially since her _Gemstone_ flight, and while her secretary Neimi handled a great deal of it, certain letters and requests did demand Eirika's personal attention. One such letter, bearing a postmark from the capital in Rausten, carried a cryptic return address, the name of a government ministry that Eirika was certain did not exist. Neimi must not have realized it, Eirika thought. "Ministry of Truth" _sounded_ official enough.

There were two photographs in the envelope, but as Eirika looked them over she realized that these were not photos to send back inscribed with an autograph. As she stared at the photo on top, Eirika recognized the setting, a garden terrace at the seaside resort at Bethroen reserved for use by those in the Programme. General Mycen sat in the center of the posed portrait, surrounded by Pilots 005, 006, and 007. The second photograph was nearly identical to the first- same subjects, same pose, but one crucial difference. Whereas the first picture had a pair of rosebushes encroaching on the general and his pilots, the the second showed only a patterned brick wall behind the group.

One photo had been altered, but to what purpose?

As Eirika looked at the curiously spaced bushes, at the equally curious gaps in the arrangement of heads, she realized that neither photo was a true record of that afternoon in Bethroen.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's note: "Ministry of Truth" and doctored photographs, eh? In case you thought this was a straight-up adventure story, the real plotline kicks in here. And yes, I realize that Roy and Eliwood existing simultaneously at the same approximate age poses a problem, even if I play the AU card. :)

Props to anyone who finds the source of "Nobody's that uncomplicated!"


	8. Designing the Perfect Pilot

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warning: just in case you thought this was purely rated "T" for "technobabble," this chapter contains consumption of alcohol and pilots behaving badly. Also, while I do not warn for canon pairings (Alm/Cellica and such), we see some other pairings from here on out, and some of them are not exactly "canon" to the games given that this is a mash-up AU. I am not warning for any het pairings. I will warn for intentional slash or femslash pairings, but not for comradely bonding that might be read through "slash goggles" if the reader so chooses.

* * *

_Chapter Eight: Designing the Perfect Pilot_

Squeezed into in a small plastic chair, beneath bright lights, facing down a panel of twelve distinguished military and civilian officials, Eirika felt like a schoolgirl under examination. Or a prisoner at interrogation. She thought, not for the first time, how a pilot's jumpsuit resembled the uniforms of the work camps. Dealing with the Commission on Manned Spaceflight always brought these thoughts to mind; no one answered their questions without the feeling that an ill-chosen answer might mean a stint in the infamous mines of western Elibe.

"Pilot 012, what do you want out of life?"

The question came from a long-nosed man with a thick brown beard and a heavy Elibean accent. The medals of a great general gleamed upon his violet uniform. Eirika remembered what she said the first time she'd been asked that question by the Commission (that time, it had come from the squat bishop with the white goatee), and since the answer had been sufficient before, she said something similar now.

"I want to support the goals of the Free Nations in promoting peace, freedom, and human dignity throughout the world."

Eirika walked away from that interview unsure if her answers had been acceptable or not. She nodded to Micaiah as they passed one another in the doorway; the Commission was interviewing the female pilots today for some obscure reason. Eirika took her seat- another uncomfortable one- in the waiting room.

"What'd you tell them when they asked you your heart's desire?" asked Lyn, who was sitting with arms folded and legs outstretched.

Eirika repeated her answer, and the Elibean pilot pursed her lips.

"Oh, that was clever. I told them I wanted to take life with both hands and get everything from it that I could." Lyn paused for effect, then added, "I don't think the Commissioners liked that."

Eirika just shook her head. Sometimes it seemed that Pilot 009 was doing her best to get ejected from the Programme so that she could return to flying jets over her native land. Aside from the inappropriate comments that crossed her lips, Lyn was getting up to other things that sounded worrisome, like smoking in public and going into the city wearing a skirt slit all the way up her thigh. When Hector had taken his joyride in Fleet-18, Lyn had- supposedly- been the one in the passenger seat.

-x-

The next time all the pilots assembled for training, Eirika kept an eye on Pilots 009 and 010, but it seemed to her that they managed to end up on opposite sides of the group more often than not. Hector always stayed by the side of his former shipmate Eliwood, engaged in dialogues that were partly for their own amusement, and partly for the amusement of everyone else in the corps.

"Wonderful," Hector exclaimed with an outsized sigh as they waited for the transport planes... and for Pilot 014, who was delayed for some reason. "Back to Grado City to have Professor Knoll scowling at us while we play in his planetarium of gloom."

"You should welcome the extra practice, Hector. You admitted yourself you don't know the difference between Antares and Arcturus."

"They're both red, aren't they? It's not as though we're ever going to be allowed to use this star-navigation training."

"Hm. I don't think so. I have the suspicion we'll actually get to do a little _piloting_ this time around.

"Huh. We can only hope for it. Those blasted automated controls are a disaster waiting to happen. Even if they do allow the generals to just grab any rookie out of flight school, lock them up in a capsule and call them a pilot."

Eirika winced; she knew Hector well enough now to realize he didn't _intend_ to slight the initial class of pilots in the corps, but really... the controls on the Falcon I capsules in particular were a sore point for all of them. Humor was one way of dealing with the situation, but on a very basic level the automated controls were simply insulting. To give a human pilot no more control over the spacecraft than a _dog..._

"Where _is_ Micaiah?" Concern darkened Eliwood's blue eyes as he interrupted his routine with Hector.

"She had a meeting with General Selena," said Cellica.

"Oh, well that can't be important," replied Hector. A general murmur of agreement ran through the corps; dealing with the Programme's director of Human Resources was at best a distraction and at worse downright irritating. No one wanted to be called in for a talk on how they'd used the wrong parking space.

Micaiah arrived just as the doors of the transport planes opened for them.

"Good morning, everyone. I hope the skies are treating you well today," said Micaiah. It seemed to be the way that Tellian pilots addressed one another, and Eirika found it endearing. The more boisterous pilots ribbed Micaiah over what she possibly had done to get so lengthy a lecture from Selena, but Micaiah just smiled and didn't say a word.

They split up, six of them traveling in one plane and seven in the other, a security measure in case of some air catastrophe. Eirika ended up on the plane with Hector and Eliwood, who resumed their conversation once they were airborne.

"... I can't believe they're putting us through all this training. It's unfair, taking so much time out of a busy schedule of holding babies and posing for sculptures..."

Eirika winced, just a little. Sometimes it sounded like the staged complaints were aimed at one person in particular. Micaiah, who also overheard Hector's jab, apparently didn't like it either.

"I'd be glad to be a model for a sculpture when this is over," she said sweetly, as though Hector were being serious. The young men took this as their cue to praise Micaiah for her silvery beauty- and to pretend to envy Ike for spending seven days in her presence.

Eirika tuned them out, settled back in her seat, and watched out her window as the white dunes of Jehanna flowed into the green lowlands of Grado.

-x-

Field training did give them all a break from the dormitory existence of Star City, comfortable as that routine was in its own way. Visits to Professor Knoll meant a stay in a charming hotel near the university, one with color-themed suites, an generous bar, and five-star service. The _maitre d'_ was always pleased to see such distinguished guests- not least, Eirika thought, because being a hotel patronized by "star sailors" was very good for business.

The _maitre d'_ rattled off a list of the night's specials, then directed an anticipatory smile at the most celebrated guest at his table. When Marth hesitated, the _maitre d'_ swiftly said, "We of course _also_ have a dish of sea scallops with glazed with orange and vanilla, served on a bed of golden rice."

"I'll take that, then," Pilot 001 replied with a picture-perfect flash of the teeth.

Eirika had seen this little routine before. Marth would allow whoever it was trying to impress them- from headwaiters to factory superintendents to foreign ambassadors- lay out the full sweep of whatever wonderful thing was on offer, and then go with whatever would leave the headwaiter/factory superintended/ambassador feeling the most self-satisfied. There was something about it that transgressed being _polite_ in a way that was starting to nettle Eirika.

For one, she never had the sense that Marth actually _liked_ scallops in orange and vanilla sauce, or any of the rest of it. In fact, during the months they had been training as a group, she could not ever remember Pilot 001 state a like or dislike of anything. Not their classes or instructors, not the latest battery of medical and psychological tests, not the fiendishly difficult scenarios thrown their way in flight simulations, and not even the dormitory food. By this point, Eirika was starting to consider it less a matter of courtesy and more a sign of something very strange.

"Don't you have any beef stew?"

That came from Hector, not ever one to be shy about his personal preferences. The _maitre d'_ immediately assured Hector that yes, they could make a most splendid beef stew with red wine and small forest mushrooms...

Once the _maitre d'_ had bustled away with their orders, Pilot 013 had a question of his own.

"All right, why _don't_ they ever have chicken on the menu here?"

"It's considered wrong to eat anything that walks upon two legs in Grado," Eirika said, pleased to have the answer before anyone else.

"They eat duck," Ike replied, leveling an unyielding stare at her across the table.

"Well, but ducks swim."

"And walk. They have feet."

"It's a technicality," Eirika admitted. She didn't know why some ancient priest of Grado had declared the eating of all land birds anathema eight centuries before, she just knew that the ban was inflexible. Even a hero of the space age wasn't going to be served roast chicken in Grado.

"It comes from the days when laguz lived in Magvel."

All heads at the table turned to Micaiah.

"There weren't ever laguz in Magvel," said Ephraim.

"There were herons once, a colony of herons in the great marshes of Grado," Micaiah replied. "In deference to herons, all birds that walked upon two legs were declared safe from the table."

Ephraim shifted uneasily in his chair.

"I don't think that ban caught on anywhere else in Magvel- any more than heron colonists did," he said, and after that they all dropped the highly uncomfortable subject.

-x-

There was, of course, a great deal of alcohol consumed that night- with dinner and afterwards. Cocktails followed the wine, and Eirika found herself clutching her glass tightly to make sure no helpful person refilled it too often. Eliwood and Micaiah were dancing, and Roy and Lyn were dancing, and of course Alm and Cellica were dancing together.

"There's not enough girls here, Ike. We'll have to make do with Celice and Leaf."

Eirika couldn't make out what Ike said in response to Hector, but she suspected it wasn't very nice.

"I'm a girl," she said, and was embarrassed by how high-pitched and giggly she sounded. Hector accepted her offer, closing his tremendous hands around hers and whirling her around. He was surprisingly agile in spite of his great height and width; easily the tallest of all the pilots, he had just barely scraped under the maximum height limit. As Eirika looked up at Hector in her slightly tipsy state, she remembered the story that he'd slept upright all through his admissions tests in hope of compressing his spine enough to pass the physical. She laughed, and Hector laughed with her and lifted her right up in the air, then set her down atop the piano.

"This isn't a duet."

Eirika hopped down from the piano and tittered an apology to Marth, who had been supplying the musical accompaniment for the evening. He didn't seemed particularly offended by the intrusion, at least once Eirika was out of the way, and she hung back for a while watching him play.

Hector, having lost his dance partner, had another idea.

"Hey, Marth! Can you play us 'Together We Ride'?"

Marth's hands paused upon the keys. He glanced up, and a smile flashed across his face for a moment, one wholly unlike the confident expression he wore in photographs.

"Sorry, I don't know any songs for real pilots."

The response, so understated that it was impossible to tell if there was malice in it or not, cut through Eirika's intoxicated haze. She saw her own bemusement reflected in Hector's face. Then Hector laughed and raised an empty glass- someone else's- in Marth's direction before going off in searching of someone else to dance with.

Eirika got herself a pitcher of water and settled down on the sidelines for the remainder of the evening. She didn't like the feeling of losing control, and besides that, there were too many important things... to many important people... that she had to pay attention to...

So Eirika watched as her brother and Ike both left early, watched as Hector and Eliwood walked out carrying Lyn between them, watched as various other pilots paired off around her. In the end, she and Marth were the only ones remaining. He hadn't left the piano all night, and even now he was playing away, banging on the keys with his unruly hair hanging down in his eyes, even though the party had long since dissolved.

She was sober by then, and as Eirika watched him, she wondered if this, perhaps, might be something Marth actually enjoyed. Or was it just a means of fending people away, of isolating himself from the rest of the group? She remembered what the psychologists had supposedly said of Ike. _No one's that uncomplicated_.

Pilot 001 seemed to be a lot less uncomplicated than legend made him out to be. Eirika wondered what Marth had answered when the Commissioners asked him what he wanted out of life.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: Fanfic and fanon in-jokes aside (not to mention space race in-jokes)... the gang is actually pretty well-behaved, given that real life '60s cosmonauts were doing things like picking up fifteen-year-old girls, causing hit-and-run accidents, and engaging in drunken balcony diving. And the US astronauts weren't any angels themselves. Privilege + pressure + lots of free drinks = problems, y'know?


	9. One of the Three

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Nine: One of the Three_

If there was one thing in her life as a pilot for which Eirika had an irrational dislike- as opposed to the perfectly rational dislike of being wired up with medical sensors, or of having to go to the bathroom under the most awkward circumstances ever conceived- it was her monthly status meetings with General Selena. The subject matter was always banal, though if Selena did detect that something was going wrong with one of the pilots- too much drink, not enough sleep, the general sense of hopelessness that came with bleak desert winters- she acted immediately to resolve it. So it wasn't Selena's fault, really, that Eirika resented the meetings to the extent that she did.

Or perhaps it was. Eirika spent that meeting trying to determine what exactly it was about Selena that caused this feeling, and finally she decided that she didn't like Selena's bright-red lipstick. Everything the general said was undercut by the cheap look of her mouth. Someone in her position, with such responsibility to the Programme, should have been more discreet.

-x-

The thirteen of them, arrayed around an elliptical table, waited for General Mycen to come in and take his seat at its head. They called it the "board room" for its resemblance to the legendary conference rooms of industrial barons, but whenever the pilot corps sat around that table in their matching jumpsuits it felt more like classroom of children playing dress-up in an adult's world. And they really were young; Eirika and Ephraim, just turned twenty-four, were among the oldest, while Roy was still only seventeen. Eirika was musing over the improbability of it all when Mycen came in. Everyone in the room sensed from his manner that the general hadn't called them in to assign them a new round of science classes.

"The launch of the next mission will be eight months from this date. Called the _Peace_ mission, its objective _will_ be the first landing on Luna. The crew selections for the mission have been supported by the Commission and approved by His Excellency the Premier."

So this was it, the moment they had spent their brief adult lives anticipating.

"The pilot for the _Peace_ mission will be 012."

The pilot was the lowest ranking member of the crew... but also the one who, with the commander, would descend to the lunar surface in the lander. The _Peace_ pilot would be the second person to step upon the the dust of another world.

_Why me? Why, out of all of us_?

In a flash, Eirika remembered Lyn saying that she'd have no problem handling the public duties of the role, remembered how Ephraim had stepped aside and let her do the speaking on their grand tour. She remembered all the accolades she'd received as the "Lunar Queen," of the newspaper articles that complimented her, in so many ways, for looking the part. Is that what it came down to? Not that she was the best among them to fly the mission, but that she was well-suited to be the Second Human Upon Luna?

"The senior pilot for this mission will be 007."

It surprised Eirika, but only for a moment. On reflection, it made good sense. Roy had handled himself perfectly on the endurance test of the _Hope_ mission; he could stand the isolation of orbiting Luna on his own in the Falcon capsule, with his comrades down on the surface. Cheerful, diligent, and more knowledgable about both the spacecraft and lunar science than most of his elders... yes, he would be a fine choice. Even if he did still look some years younger than his age.

"The commander for the _Peace_ mission will be 001."

Eirika did not make a sound. Her breath did not catch in her throat, she did not move reflexively in surprise, and she kept on looking forward, looking directly at the general. None of them made any sound at all; they were too well-trained for that. Mycen continued without giving them any time to digest the assignments.

"The backup crew for this mission consists of Pilots 011, 005, and 014. Prime and backup crews will meet with the Chief Engineers tomorrow at 0800 hours to discuss expectations." He looked his pilots over for a moment, as though challenging them to ask questions. "All dismissed."

The delayed wave of sound erupted then as chairs skidded backward across the floor; Eirika felt that half the room was converging on her, wringing her hand and thumping her on the back, telling her how happy they were for her. She looked around the room, seeking one familiar set of eyes, and in the gap between Leaf's head and Ike's shoulder, she saw Roy looking back at her. He seemed achingly young with his red mop of hair and wide blue eyes, but the set of his mouth, of his brows, showed the self-assurance of a space veteran. She smiled at him, but then more well-wishers were upon her and she lost eye contact. Well, she and Roy would be seeing a great deal of one another in the foreseeable future.

Only after the hubbub diminished somewhat did Eirika spot her brother. Ephraim's face showed nothing; five years in flight school and another six in the Magvel Air Force had taught him to be impassive when it mattered. But his eyes... the pupils had dilated to the point where the vivid blue-green of his eyes was nearly swallowed up by blackness. Only a thin ring of color showed, like the corona of a sun in eclipse.

It should have been a happy moment for Eirika, a moment of pride and honor and excitement. Instead, the moment was clouded by a feeling of something gone very wrong- not just sorrow for her brother that he was denied the chance to be First Upon Luna, but a searing sense of betrayal that she was going to the moon without him.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Note: So, the shoe finally drops, and Ephraim, despite his mad piloting skillz, is relegated to being the backup commander on the mission he wanted more than anything. And Eirika gets to be the first woman on the moon, which she didn't particularly want. Dun dun dun...


	10. A Pair of Human Hands

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Ten_:_ A Pair of Human Hands_

When Eirika and Ephraim entered the Human Spaceflight Programme, the pilot corps had been segmented, voluntarily segregated by "class," based on who entered the corps at the same time, who served together on missions, who came from the same region of the globe. Months of intensive training had welded those fragments into a unit, even a family, as veteran pilots who'd flown simple missions worked alongside the newcomers who'd flown lengthy, complex missions. Now, the assignments for the mission dubbed "Peace" sent a wedge right through the corps.

The senior pilots took the attitude that Marth's selection as commander was right, proper, and decidedly foreordained: "Well, of course he's going to be the first. He was _always _first in line for assignment."

It was the junior pilots, Eirika thought, from the _Aureola_ crew on down, that seemed knocked off-balance by the news. The feeling there ran more along the lines of, "Why him? He's _already_ going to be famous the rest of his life. Why didn't one of us get the chance?"

Eliwood was perhaps the most charitable of the "newcomers."

"Those early missions might have been an honor, but they did have a downside. No pilot wants to be a passenger in a capsule with the controls locked down. If any of us had been on _Starlight_, we'd want another chance in space to prove ourselves."

And that made sense, up to a point- give Pilot 001 another chance to fly, but why give him _that_ mission, the _Peace_ mission, the Luna landing? Why allow him another bite of the sweet apple of immortality when he'd already tasted it?

So Eirika had another worry besides the heavy responsibility of being the _other_ moonwalker for _Peace_. She had to worry that her mission, her impressive new assignment, would be the one to stir the pilot corps into revolt.

-x-

Then again, Duessel and Mycen gave Eirika a workload that left her with little time to worry. Now that she was officially designated a moonwalker, the scope of her training narrowed but its intensity increased threefold. More helicopter practice, more lunar-gravity exercises, more geology lessons. She had private lessons now with Professor Saleh as he showed her how to tell an impact breccia from a welded ashflow tuff. The professor had seemed a dry and distant man at first, though he'd shown some flashes of good humor in dealing with his thirteen charges during their outings to Hamill Canyon. Interacting with her one-on-one, he proved both encouraging and remarkably patient, treating all of her mistakes as an opportunity for a new lesson. Eirika wasn't used to that mode of teaching; when dealing with experimental aircraft, one couldn't treat errors as a learning opportunity.

"You know the scientific community is divided on the value of sending humans to the moon at all," he said to her one afternoon as they walked through the high desert around Star City. "Especially the value of sending test pilots rather than scientists."

"I hope to not disappoint them too greatly," said Eirika as she rolled a quartz pebble between her fingers. She had to admit that the desert looked far more interesting to her now that she knew the names of the rocks and why each had the color it did.

"You won't disappoint us," said the professor, and an oddly gentle smile softened his austere features. His eyes, keen as any falcon's when looking over a piece of plagioclase feldspar, seemed to soften as well. "We could send robotic probes to Luna more easily than we could send any human beings. If that were the focus of the Spaceflight Programme, I've no doubt we'd already have."

"Sending robots alone wouldn't inspire people," Eirika said. She felt quite sure of that; the first satellites launched by the UFN had evoked pride through Magvel Union, and presumably all the free nations, but it was nothing compared to the mass celebrations during and after the _Starlight_ mission. To hear the radio transmissions coming down from beyond the blue sky, to hear a human boy's voice greeting the peoples of the world- from space!- meant something profound. It had meant enough to Ephraim that he'd given up on his beloved jets and taken a chance with rocketeers and tin-can spacecraft, and it had meant enough to Eirika that she'd followed her brother into the Programme.

"No. The robots would not tell us everything we need to know," Saleh agreed. "To have a pair of human eyes, of human hands, explore a new world will give us more than a little container of soil. Human eyes and human hands will give us Luna's story, and a human voice will share that story to those of us left on Terra."

The wind had picked up, ruffling Saleh's dark curls and sending Eirika's own hair out like a pale streamer. Saleh stopped short, turning toward Eirika that she might better hear him.

"Become the voice of Luna, Eirika. Tell her story to the peoples of Terra, that we might better understand ourselves."

He'd never talked to the pilot corps as a whole like this, not that Eirika could remember. For the first time since her assignment to _Peace_, Eirika felt the purpose of her mission. Perhaps she didn't necessarily deserve to be on the first Luna landing, but she might be able to earn that place.

"Thank you, Professor. I want to do well for you... for all of you."

She dropped the pebble; it fell to the gravel, white upon white, and was lost.

-x-

Eirika found a scrap of paper in the dormitory atrium. Out of curiosity she picked it up; the cleaning staff usually kept Star City's central palace spotless. The paper's front was an old calculus assignment, while the back contained two hand-written lines that seemed, she thought, to be poetry.

_then turn us all to stardust_

_and blind the world with light_

She was not certain of the handwriting.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's note: Any implications of Saleh/Eirika are completely intentional.


	11. The Little Prince

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters... or _Tear Ring Saga_ and any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Eleven: The Little Prince_

It was good to fly again with her brother, Eirika thought, as she and Ephraim shot above the white sands in their TR-27. The sleek little two-seater training jet could fly faster than sound, and that was how Ephraim liked to fly her on their "commutes" around Magvel. Out the window to the left Eirika could see another jet keeping pace with them, the one carrying Pilots 001 and 014.

At that speed, at that altitude, it would be impossible to survive if any of them had to eject for any reason. The parachutes would never have time to open. Eirika wondered for a moment at the needless risk of the speed and grace they took for granted, but then slipped back into a feeling of comfort. Her brother's hands were on the controls- this was, after all, how she'd learned to fly.

-x-

Eirika had never trained alongside a back-up crew before; at the time of the _Gemstone_ mission, she had the understanding that, if she or Ephraim were ill or injured and couldn't go into space, any of the veteran pilots would simply be rotated into the assignment. But the _Peace _mission, with its two separate spacecraft and three crew members, was too complex for such basic contingency plans. Ephraim with his crewmates Celice and Micaiah trained alongside the "prime" crew. So, when Eirika and Marth went to the laboratory in Serafew where the rock-collecting tools to be used on the moon were developed, Ephraim and Micaiah accompanied them. Flight rules stated that a "prime" pilot could not fly with his or her direct backup, though, so that allowed Eirika to spend some time in the air with her brother. Marth didn't complain about having to fly with Micaiah... and if he had, Eirika might have made the argument that prime crew members shouldn't be in the same jet, either.

Ephraim lost the race back to Star City's landing strip. His jet's electrical system sputtered, with all the cockpit lights going black when they were only ten minutes away from their destination. Eirika didn't panic; after watching Ephraim handle the _Gemstone_ re-entry, she felt she could trust him to deal with anything short of engine flameout. But Ephraim had a few hard words for their jet once he had them safely on the ground.

"They should sell this piece of junk to the Lieberian air force!"

"We had a requisition in for ten new TR-27As," observed Marth. Neither he nor Micaiah had offered congratulations to Ephraim on a safe landing- it wouldn't have been taken well if they had. They were all supposed to be better than that. "Chief Designer _S_ had it cancelled, saying the money was better spent on the Air Force."

"Why would he do that?" Ephraim batted his tousled hair out of his eyes in frustration. "We _are_ part of the Air Force."

"If missiles aren't involved, _S_ isn't interested. You know how the saying goes- '_G _works for Sephiran, _A _works on nonsense, and _S _works for us.'"

"Us," in this case, being the part of the UFN's military that was focused entirely on offensive strategies against the Lopts and their allies. Of the three Chief Designers, the shadowy geniuses who were purported to be the brains behind Magvel's technological prowess, _S_ specialized in ballistic missiles. _G_, the Chief Designer behind the Human Spaceflight Programme, had other priorities when it came to launching rockets, a vision of sending humans to the moon and beyond instead of sending nuclear warheads into the heart of the Loptos Empire.

"If _G_ works for Sephiran, maybe he should ask the premier to get us some new trainer jets," retorted Ephraim.

Arguments over the Chief Designers and their priorities lasted the entire journey back to the pilot dormitory. On arrival, Eirika and Micaiah bolted from their respective commanders and obtained themselves some dinner from the cafeteria. They took their trays back to dormitory's common room, where a delightfully familial scene was in progress. Lyn and Eliwood were playing a round of table tennis, the television chattered in the background, and Alm and Cellica had turned one corner of the room into a play area for their daughter. Eirika stepped around some toys belonging to Anteze Rima-Rudolf as she carried her tray to the couch; it was reassuring to see the world's first "space baby" had blocks and a stuffed rabbit to play with instead of little rockets or miniature spacemen.

".._.the Minister for Education denounced the wild tales as the work of foreign journalists hostile to the core values of the Free Nations_."

Eirika looked up at the television screen; on it, a woman with long green hair was speaking in Elibean; subtitles proclaimed that the Minister was defending the experiments on human sleep as "beneficial to the people" and vehemently denying that any subjects had participated against their will.

"What's this?" she asked Leaf, who was staring at the screen; tension showed in the set of his jaw.

"The foreign press is reporting that the University of Aqu'lea did bizarre experiments on Air Force cadets, freezing them for decades..."

"Turn it off, Leaf," Eliwood called from his end of the tennis table.

But the image on the television had already changed to the familiar sight of a rocket launch.

"_The Ministry of Defense reports the successful launch of a new satellite from the spaceport in Jehanna. This satellite, bound for Mars, will be the first ever to orbit and photograph the Red Planet_..."

The rocket's trail of fire was replaced by an image of Premier Sephiran. The premier's voice always disconcerted Eirika, as it seemed to belong to a man far older than Sephiran's dark hair and unlined face would indicate. Now, the premier spoke of the new milestone that this mission represented for the UFN, of how the brilliance of Chief Designer _A_ would result in another "first" for the free peoples of Terra.

"There he goes," said Ike, with surprisingly little love for his fellow Tellian exile. "Always covering the Chief Designers in praise but never with anything to say about the men and women who actually put these machines together."

Leaf's brow wrinkled at this; his expressions often mirrored, in some curious way, the wary look of his father-in-law Finn.

"Has anyone actually _seen_ the Chief Designers? Are they men at all, or some kind of committee?"

"They're men." This came from Alm, who had been on the carpet playing with Anteze. He stood now and looked over the junior pilots. Alm smiled easily and often, but that smile was nowhere to be seen in that moment. "You people doubt the Chief Designers? Am I hearing that right?"

"We don't even know their names," Leaf protested, though it was a weak protest- he was already looking at the ground.

"It's classified," murmured Cellica. "If anyone knew the identities of the Chief Designers, they could be targeted..."

"Have you ever seen them?" asked Ike. He wasn't being rude, exactly, but the senior pilots weren't accustomed to such forthright questions.

"Sure," replied Alm. "They attended the launches for _Starlight _and _Nova_. All three of them were there."

"_Starlight _and_ Nova_, huh?" Again, Ike didn't sound doubtful, but neither did he sound entirely satisfied by the answer. "Have they attended any other launches?"

"I- I don't know. I wasn't at most of them."

"So what did they look like?" This came from Lyn; she and Eliwood had left off their game to listen in on the conversation.

"I can't tell you that." Alm shot a look of appeal at his wife.

"What exactly do they _do_?" Now Hector plunged into the conversation.

Eirika had the sense of something slipping, of the crack between the original pilots and their successors opening like a fissure in the ground at a fault line. She could see her fears mirrored in Alm's unsmiling face, in the way Cellica gazed at her husband. Neither of them seemed to know what to do about the barrage of questions from the junior pilots.

"All the engineers- Finn, Innes, Merric, and the rest- report to one of the Chief Designers," Cellica said quickly. "That's it. There's no mystery about it; they're the supervisors of the engineers and all their projects."

"Finn might have seen them, then." Leaf was thinking aloud. "Maybe I'll ask him..."

"Leaf, he won't be able to tell you-"

"_Blast it, Lyn_!"

Even though it was obvious that Pilot 009 had deliberately aimed a ball at Hector to lighten the mood, it worked; the pilots returned to their prior activities of eating, watching television, and playing with the baby. But Eirika saw the look that Pilot 002 aimed at Pilot 003, the sort of look that said, in so many words, "What the hell is wrong with these kids?"

-x-

The _Peace_ crew divided their tasks with regards to the hardware. Whereas the Falcon I and Falcon II capsules had been produced "to spec" with minimal input from the pilots, the Falcon III was being customized to an unprecedented extent. Roy took the lead on that, as the capsule was his "baby," and so he spent many hours dealing with Chief Engineer Innes at the Falcon factory in Frelia. The rest of it fell to Marth and Eirika, including the ever-problematic lunar lander… and some even more outlandish gear.

The two of them went together- with_out_ their backups- to the facility in Carcino where the lunar "rover" was being constructed; this flimsy solar-powered buggy would serve as their transportation on the lunar surface, allowing them to travel some distance from the landing site. As Eirika and Marth, in their puffy and ungainly spacesuits, tested the rover's seats, it was very hard to imagine how all of this would feel in one-sixth the gravity they felt upon Terra. Perhaps the rover would work, but right now Eirika imagined the rover collapsing under them, sending them both bouncing away in Luna's dust.

"Will we be belted in?"

No, they would not be. Belts would add extra weight, they might snag on things, the rover couldn't even go that fast—and besides, did Eirika expect to meet any oncoming traffic up there?

After they had suggested some more feasible modifications to the rover engineers, Eirika and Marth took the box lunches they'd been provided and went out to the pleasantly park-like factory campus for their meal. The trees were bare and the grass yellowed by frost, but the Carcinese breeze was mild for winter. It was also a relief to be out of the spacesuits; they were difficult enough to wear in zero-G (Eirika still had dreams about her spacewalk going wrong), but in a hot Terran factory, in Terran gravity, they were appalling.

Eirika noticed the gibbous Luna riding fairly high in the afternoon sky; it looked hardly more substantial than the cirrus clouds around it. To see it like this, a pale and wispy apparition... Eirika simply couldn't reconcile _this_ Luna with the cratered globe she'd seen rushing beneath her on the _Gemstone_ mission.

_How did humans ever decide it was a ball of rock at all? It looks like it was painted on the sky..._

"One of the most famous children's books in Renais is about a little boy who lives on another planet as its prince," she began, simply from the desire to share some portion of _feeling_ with her commander. "The planet is so small that, when the sun sets, all he has to do is move his chair a little to see the sun set all over again. For years I wondered what it would be like to see the sun from a different world."

"That book's famous throughout Terra," Marth said after a moment. "My mother used to read it to me."

"Really?" It was the first personal detail she could ever remember hearing from him- directly, that is, not on television or in a magazine interview. And Eirika, emboldened by what seemed like an invitation to talk personally, asked Marth the wild question that had sprung up in her brain back when news of _Starlight'_s success had burst upon the world. "When you were in orbit, did you think of yourself as the little prince?"

He'd been looking up at Luna, but now he slowly turned to stare at her. The breeze had blown his hair down into his eyes, which were brilliantly blue and completely unrevealing.

"I thought of myself as a test pilot."

Not hostile, not even short with her... just incredulous, Eirika thought. She looked down at the dusty tips of her boots, feeling foolish for asking a silly girl's silly question. Would she ever have asked Ephraim something like that? Of course not.

"Come on," he said, sounding as though the previous exchange had never even happened. "We have to fly home if we're to be there in time to see the movie tonight."

The way he said it, it sounded as though being in Star City for that month's Movie Night was a given, something as necessary as checking out the rover here in Carcino. And Eirika, who at first had quite enjoyed the privilege of private screenings of films- even foreign films!- now felt as though seeing another war movie or inspirational romance was quite a hollow amusement. Who needed movies when living day-to-day was so very strange?

She glanced up again at the painted moon on its backdrop sky and tried turn it into the Luna she knew- the bleak and terrible expanse of endless craters, the starless void in space.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's note:

The plot thickens with the addition of a trio of Chief Designers who may not have the best interests of the pilots in mind. Meanwhile, the pilot corps is fracturing; don't these kids have a leader or something?

Yes, the fictional Renaitian book is inspired by the _The Little Prince_ by Saint-Exupéry. It has a bit of a space connection.

Oh, and Lieberia is on the same planet as the _Fire Emblem_ continents, as it ought to be.


	12. Crater

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warning: This chapter contains character death and a fair amount of drinking.

* * *

_Chapter Twelve: Crater_

One small motion of the hand, one second in time, was all it took to put the world upside down and then right again. The ailerons on the right wing of Eirika's TR-27 went up, the left ailerons went down, and so she executed a perfect corkscrew turn in the air over Frelia. In moments like this, Eirika understood how flight could be, for men like her brother, a _need_ as deep as any physical urge. To sail over the land at her own schedule, under her own command, to be able to turn heaven and earth on their heads, if only for a moment... it was marvelous. It was magic.

One slight shift of her hand, one second in the air, one more perfect aileron roll.

Magic.

-x-

Chief Engineer Innes gave her a personal tour of the factory that had been his domain for the last four years. Innes wanted the moon with a desire so fierce he could hardly mask it; his pale-gray eyes gleamed like moonstone when he spoke of her upcoming journey to Luna. He spoke passionately of Luna, of winning her as a hero in an ancient story might win the hand of his lady, and Eirika could only sigh inwardly and shake her head at him afterward. That the Chief Engineer- with his fine suit, his spotless factory, and his cadre of loyal assistants- would want to trade the life he now had for a faded blue jumpsuit and a room in the dormitory, would want to take a place at the rear of the pilots' pecking order and jostle elbows in the common room with mere children who'd been transfigured by the state into heroes...

And yet, from the comments Innes made about goings-on in Star City, he seemed to have a decent grasp of what he might be getting into. Perhaps the allure of the moon was enough to make a man take leave of his senses... perhaps not.

Eirika was nearly done with her tour of the Falcon factory when a young technician in a smart white coat bustled up to her.

"There's a telephone call for you, Captain."

"Thank you...Vanessa," said Eirika, thankful she'd caught a glimpse of the name on the technician's badge.

Eirika thought it might be a summons from one of the generals, but happily it was her brother on the line. Ephraim was at present on the distant continent of Lieberia, visiting an air show in the company of Pilot 008. General Duessel had sent them there after catching rumors that Lopt spacefarers would make an appearance at the event, in a bid to convince the neutral continent that a good future lay in alliance with the Empire.

"Two of the Lopt pilots did come," her brother said through the crackle of the long-distance line. "One of them was a cat boy. His eyes were different colors, even. Nice kid, spoke our language pretty well. The other was a hawk-man, with wings and everything. I wasn't sure about him at first, but he turned out to be all right. I'd fly with him."

Eirika smiled at hearing her brother bestow this supreme compliment of camaraderie between pilots upon one of the Lopts, but the idea of Ephraim mingling freely with the foreigners did worry her somewhat.

"You didn't talk about anything with them, did you?"

"We drank a toast to no accidents in space, and we drank to friendship between pilots. Eliwood and I drank a toast to the pretty girls who were serving us- Lieberians are humans, did you know that? I didn't. And then we drank to how much we hate the medics, and we drank to some other things. I don't remember."

Eirika, buoyed by her brother's apparent success in foreign lands, executed more than one aileron roll on her flight back to Star City. During one of them, she glimpsed a slivery flash on the ground below, near the intersection of two Superhighways. It was the gleam of one of Frelia's greatest and newest landmarks- a statue cast in titanium of a young pilot, ten times larger than life, his arms stretched out to the skies in triumph.

-x-

Eirika had hardly settled back in to her office with its overflowing baskets of mail when the red light on her phone began to glow.

"Eirika?" The unexpected voice of Pilot 005 caused Eirika's hand to tighten upon the telephone receiver. "Please come to the Head Office. We've had a problem."

"I'll be there at once," she said, perfectly calm though her heart was thumping out a chant of _Don't let this be about Ephraim, don't let this be about Ephraim._

Celice waited for her at the Head Office; his face seemed nearly as pale as his white headband.

"Celice, what is it?"

"Hec- Pilot 010 was in an accident in one of the trainer jets."

"Accident," if one was speaking of an automobile, or a bicycle, or even a train, might mean any number of things, from a bent wheel to a fireball. But when one was speaking of jets, of spacecraft, of something built to shatter the sound barrier... "accident" meant only one thing.

And now, as Eirika brought her hands to her mouth in an involuntary response to the shock, she could only _think_ of one thing.

_He was such a good pilot_.

As good or better than Ephraim, far better than any of the rest of them. Not one of the shaky stick-and-rudder men, one of the pilots of whom they could have said, in hindsight, "It was bound to happen- he just didn't have _the edge_." No, as a pilot, pure and simple, Hector had been the best of his generation. His phenomenal skills had been his ticket into the Programme, after all- no one had any illusions about making a geologist or astrophysicist out of Hector, but give him a machine and he could fly her.

And to think a simple trainer jet had taken him down...

"How?"

"We don't know the cause yet. The investigation's started, but it'll be a while... there just wasn't much left."

Eirika knew what that meant, too. Not a pancaked jet, but an obliterated one. Something that hit the ground at supersonic speed, leaving a scar... a crater. A great blasted hole in the ground.

"He died flying," Celice said, as though it were some kind of comfort. And it should have been, from one pilot to another, but as Eirika stared into Celice's face, she could see that he wasn't feeling any reassurance in it, either. Not in a training jet and a smoking crater in the Terran soil.

Not when they'd been trained to ride rockets to the moon.

-x-

Three days later, Eirika had to pull her Air Force Captain's uniform out of the closet and deck herself in all the glittering medals that usually sat atop her dresser along with unused jewelry. Then it was off to the waiting fleet car, and a transport plane, and another fleet car, and finally she and the rest of the pilot corps stood in Freedom Square, the most hallowed of Ivaldi's ancient courtyards. The pilots in their smart caps and blue jackets were brilliant tropical birds amid the dark-clad flock of ministers and scholars; their splendor was almost ridiculous, Eirika thought. Especially as it was so evident that the finery was all hung upon small mortal bodies. They were as bright and fragile as the thousands of flowers that had lined their route to Ivaldi Court.

Eirika walked shoulder-to-shoulder with Roy in the procession; her brother was ahead in the line, part of the honor guard carrying the catafalque that held both the portrait and the ashes of Pilot 010. Just looking at that portrait ringed in blossoms, that image of Hector in his cap and jacket with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, sent a fresh barb of grief through Eirika's heart. Already she'd caught herself looking among them for his shock of deep blue hair and his broad-shouldered form, and to think that he just wouldn't be there anymore...

Why Hector? Well, why any of them? Whose loss could they have sustained easily? How cruel it be to see Alm ripped apart from Cellica, to see either of them left alone with their little girl? How unjust would it be to lose either Celice or Leaf, both of them with pretty young wives now, both of them soon to be fathers? Or...

Eirika could not resist staring then at the other one of their number whose death would have been greeted with an echo of disbelief- "_But he was such a good pilot_." There was still no explanation for the way Hector's jet plunged out of the air. It could have been Ephraim, might easily have been Ephraim.

Was this an appropriate feeling or not, the feeling of relief that it was _not_ her brother in that urn, reduced to a handful of ashes? The Commission and the State had no answers for her there. The Commissioners had no answers in their brief, rote, statements of honor, duty, and love for the motherland. Premier Sephiran had no answers when he spoke of the hardships that were necessary for glory, of the sacrifices that would enable humanity to, at long last, "awaken the goddess Luna." As Sephiran gave his speech, Eirika wondered which of those in the crowd might be Chief Designer _S_, the man who denied the request for new planes so that he might have more funds allocated to his Wyvern missiles. No, that was ungracious. None of their leaders would consciously condemn a pilot to a fiery death through negligence.

A true sense of humanity finally came to the service when Eliwood was permitted to say a few words in honor of his friend and fellow pilot; his clear and resonant voice imbued some genuine feeling to the stilted formal phrases. Then it was Lyn's turn, and instead of speaking she sang an Elibean mourning song, a dirge for fallen warriors. Chills raced up and down Eirika's spine as she listened to Lyn's keening vocals; Eirika didn't understand a word of the song in any literal sense, but its _meaning_ was unmistakable.

Everything seemed so clear, so sharply defined in that moment- flags against the blue sky, and sunlight glinting off everyone's medals and braids, and Lyn's voice ringing out against the ancient walls. Eirika looked at the crescent Luna suspended above the horizon, a world apart from any great ceremonies of state, and wondered how it looked to Hector from the other side of existence.

She hoped he was still flying.

-x-

The pilot corps spent the night at the most plush hotel in the capital, as though this would somehow ease the loss of a comrade. The open bar might have done something on that account, more so than the marble, crystal, and carmine velvet of the ballroom they took over that evening.

Lyn wasn't drinking, nor did she shed any tears.

"Dance," she said, her chin high and proud. "He would want us to dance."

And she danced, by herself in a style none of them knew, the mare's tail of her bound-up hair whipping around she spun. In ones and twos the rest of them shrugged off their malaise and joined her, and voices and the sound of the piano rose as their evening of gloom became a raucous wake.

_Remember when he smuggled that sandwich onto the spacecraft so we'd have some real food to eat up there?_

_Remember when he rode the centrifuge to 13G and then _yawned_ like it wasn't anything?_

_Remember when he joined us, and the first thing he said to General Duessel was..._

_Remember..._

Eirika measured out the hours in sips from her cocktail glass; there was an undercurrent of desperation in the room that signaled to her that this was not a night to lose control of herself. She drank just enough to dull the sharpest edges of grief, so that she felt a dreary kind of acceptance when she searched the room for Hector and didn't find him.

"It's all right to cry tonight," Ephraim whispered once in her ear. "Tomorrow we all go back on duty."

_He_ was not weeping, and it seemed to Eirika that her brother was cold sober; Ephraim prowled the room, seeming more a sentry than a participant in the wake. Perhaps he also sensed an element of danger, she thought. When loud voices in the adjacent room caught their attention, Ephraim was the one to investigate.

"Hey, comrades," she heard him rebuke the arguing parties. "No being unsociable tonight- come on back to the table."

Marth and Alm returned a few moments later, both of them wearing the expressions of people resolutely pretending nothing was the matter. Alm's facade wavered first; he walked back to Cellica's side, tossed back a shot of vodka and sat the rest of the night regarding them all with a stare of intense disapproval. Marth, meanwhile, took over the piano and hid behind it the remainder of the night.

"What were they arguing about?" Eirika asked her brother on his next circuit of the room.

"They were both speaking that dialect from the Islands," he said. "For most of it, anyway."

In the end, Eirika neither wept nor danced, but kept to herself as she tried to puzzle out her own forebodings. It was normal, of course, to be fearful and morbid after a death, especially a shocking accident. And from the time she'd been a cadet, it seemed that accidents came in clusters, two or three following swiftly upon the initial event. Each of them knew that; were they all gauging the chances of who might fall next?

But the death of Pilot 004 had been an isolated event. They'd gone years between disasters. Cold comfort, to be sure, but it was all they had at present.

Marth did know "Together We Ride," Eirika thought hazily as the familiar melody distracted her from these dim thoughts. He moved his lips now and again, as though silently acknowledging the words, but never did sing.

-x-

Another envelope from the "Ministry of Truth" was waiting for Eirika when she returned to the office. The photograph this time was a black-and-white image of some cadets from Elibe's Air Force Academy. It looked to have been taken at least twenty years before. Three of the small blurred faces resembled those of Hector, Lyn, and Eliwood.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's note: Yes, that was Ranulf and Tibarn.


	13. The Motherland Knows

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Thirteen: The Motherland Knows_

Ephraim waited until after the funeral to show her the magazines he'd collected during his jaunt to Lieberia. Eirika looked through them with a rising sense of dismay; while the crew assignments for _Peace_, and the mission plan for _Peace_ itself, remained secret, the foreign press was well aware that Lunar Queen Eirika was spending a great deal of time in the company of the pilot known as the Hero of Space. As Eirika looked at the pictures of herself with Marth- some taken with a telephoto lens, some alarmingly clear and close-up- and the speculative captions the Lieberian columnists had supplied for them, she felt a bit... dirtied.

Eirika intended to just leave the magazines on Neimi's desk with the excuse that her secretary might be amused by them. Pilot 012 did, after all, have more important things that demanded her attention. Important things, like sending cards to new mothers who'd named their sons "Eirik" and their daughters "Eirika" in her honor, or sending autographs to nine-year-old students who'd written in to Captain Sieglinde, calling her their favorite star-sailor. But as she flipped one of the tabloids over, she noted a strangely familiar photograph accompanying one article.

"Early promise of Lieberian space program has borne no fruit," lamented the article's header. Eirika read through the article, a frothy piece long on opinion and short on fact, before she allowed herself to look at the caption of the photograph.

_Though Lieberia rejoiced when two of her pilots were accepted into the UFN manned space program, they have not yet flown a mission_.

Eirika forced herself to look again at the photograph- calmly, without any wild leaps to unsupported conclusions. The central figure in the photograph was beyond doubt General Mycen, and three of the faces around him were familiar to Eirika. Celice, Leaf, Roy. But the other two young men, the ones who stood in the grouping where Eirika was used to seeing rosebushes, were unknown to her. One bore a striking resemblance to Leaf, but had light eyes- blue or gray, Eirika could not tell; the other was tall and slim, with wavy fair hair.

This then, was the secret of that day in Bethroen. Two pilots, or potential pilots, whose names had never been celebrated in the streets of Magvel, Lieberia, or anywhere else. Two young men whose faces, whose very existence, had been carefully brushed away.

-x-

"I like this one."

Roy tapped the least complicated of the mission badge samples laid before the _Peace_ crew. It showed a pure-white dove, an olive branch in its beak, hovering above the lunar surface with Terra in the background. Around the rim of the badge ran the crew names, as was customary. _Anriou-Gilleroth-Sieglinde_.

"Yes," agreed Eirika. The design had no capsules or rockets cluttering it, nor did it contain anything overtly patriotic. It was simple, universal. To Luna, with peace in our hearts.

"It's the best of them," said Marth. "The names should be removed, though."

Eirika blinked.

"This is a moment to be shared by all humans... not only the three of us," Marth added, before either of them could ask.

Yes, of course. Eirika nodded her agreement. It was a moment to be embraced by all the humans scattered across the globe of Terra, from Lieberia to the distant snows of Ilia. The thought of Lieberia reminded Eirika of the mystery lurking her desk-drawer, though, and once Marth had collected the sample badges and left to give their decision to the generals, Eirika decided to hazard a conversation with Roy.

"Did Leaf have a brother involved with the Programme?"

"No." Roy's voice, like his smooth-cheeked face, was not fully matured, and Eirika could hear a note of sharp surprise pierce his usual composure at her question. "He doesn't have any brothers. Just a sister..."

"Oh. I saw a photograph recently of another young man who looked very much like Leaf, though his eyes were gray."

"Blue," Roy corrected her; he then flushed slightly at the admission. "Runan had blue eyes. He wasn't a relative of Leaf's, though- he came from Lieberia."

"What happened to him?"

"He had trouble with the centrifuge tests, so he could never become a full pilot. They sent him home after a few months."

"Were there any others like him?

"Yes." Eirika saw no guile in Roy's wide blue eyes, but there was something subtly wrong in them. Was it fear? Fear or what... or of whom? "There was another... Holmes. He developed some trouble with his neck, or his back... I think."

"And they both went home?"

"Yes."

"Where to?"

"Lieberia," Roy said, and the trace of _wrongness_ in his eyes disappeared. "Neither of them were from the UFN."

"I see."

And yet, the Lieberian press did not acknowledge that their heroes had been sent back like a shipment of defective merchandise. So there was another layer to the mystery, beyond the altered photographs and the unspoken names of two pilot candidates. But it was, for the moment at least, far beyond Eirika's reach.

-x-

Eirika had a stretch of unscheduled time that afternoon, and she decided to spend some time with her own thoughts in one of Star City's many civic parks. She ended up in a semi-circular plaza at the heart of the city and settled down there on a bench set amidst an arc of cement columns. The curved lintel above the columns bore an inspirational message in great block capitals.

THE MOTHERLAND KNOWS WHERE HER SON SAILS

Around the plaza's perimeter were medallions commemorating each of the Programme's flown missions... and their pilots. Eirika found herself skipping over the _Gemstone_ mission with hardly a glance, as her attention was drawn to the memorial to Major Sigurd Byronsen Baldos, known to his comrades as Pilot 004. Eirika was not one of those comrades; she had entered the Programme after his fiery demise during the reentry of his _Astra_ mission, and so knew of Major Baldos only as he was depicted in the medallion- a handsome young man with an air of fierce confidence.

The senior pilots, those who had known Major Baldos, never mentioned him by name- when they mentioned him at all. It was always "Pilot 004," or "the _Astra_ tragedy," or more often the unspoken _thing_ that shadowed conversations. So Eirika still had very little idea of the departed pilot as a human being; she knew that he'd been a refugee from Jugdral, that he'd left behind a widow and a young son, that he- like Hector- had been renowned for his piloting skills even before joining the Programme. And that was it.

And now, with the faces of the missing pilot candidates fresh in her mind, Eirika had to wonder what else there was in the Programme's history that had been carefully covered up. She had, up to that point, never questioned the practice of keeping pilot identities secret until they'd made their first spaceflight. It never once had occurred to her that the secrecy might be used as a means of concealing... mistakes. But those altered photographs, the subtle but definite fear in Roy's eyes... had the two pilot candidates from Lieberia met their ends in a less stunning, less public way than Pilots 004 and 010? What exactly had happened in between that sunny day in Bethroen and Eirika's arrival into the piloting corps?

She was mulling this over when she noticed a familiar figure coming down the street, headed in her direction. Marth, it seemed, had also decided a free afternoon was too precious to waste indoors. Eirika followed his progress as he entered the plaza, and as he approached she offered him a seat beside her on the bench. He took it, sitting so close that she noticed a fresh soap-smell of pine and cedar.

The sat in companionable silence for a time; it seemed about fifteen minutes had passed when Eirika initiated talk with a question.

"What made you decide to become a pilot?"

"The Lopts overran my country when I was fourteen. My parents both were killed, my sister captured and sent to the camps."

"Ah... I'm sorry. I know we've been very fortunate in Magvel, not to suffer as so many other continents have suffered."

"I was attending school here in Magvel, at the Air Force Academy," he continued, as though he hadn't heard her. "I didn't think at all about being a test pilot. I had a friend at the Academy of Sciences, and I asked to transfer there so I could one day enter the nuclear program. All I could think of was obliterating the Lopt nations, blasting them from existence the way they'd annihilated Altea."

He paused again, and this time Eirika waited out the brief silence.

"The academy superintendent refused to let me transfer, but he said that if I really wanted to do something meaningful that might help my country, there was a special program I could enter... if I could pass the tests."

"What sort of tests?"

"I think you're familiar with them. The hot room, the cold room, the sensory deprivation room, the centrifuge..."

Eirika remembered. She remembered reciting nonsensical fragments of nursery rhyme to herself in the darkness of the sensory-deprivation chamber, remembered how badly she wanted to take off her boots as the temperatures rose in the heat chamber.

"And you were fourteen?" Subjecting a child to those tests seemed...wrong. The word _inhumane_ was what came to mind, really. Eirika had gone through them herself, of course, but she was already a qualified pilot, not a _cadet_.

"There were no other students from the Eastern Islands in my year, and my family was gone, so it wasn't as though I had anything better to do." Eirika thought she heard, for the first time, a trace of bitterness in his voice. There was a trace of _something_ there, at any rate. "I did get credit for participation, so I was able to graduate from the academy early- right into the pilot corps. A year later..."

And they both contemplated the medallion celebrating the _Starlight_ mission. Eirika's eyes drifted upward after a moment. The very words above them had become part of history when the young man sitting next to her had spoken them, a last transmission before _Starlight_'s signal dissolved into the dead air of re-entry. None knew then if the tiny capsule and its human cargo would even survive re-entry; for every two dogs launched and returned safely, one dog died.

"Do you still want revenge on them?"

"I- I don't..." For a moment, Eirika thought that he was going to say "yes," but then he fell back on the kind of answer suitable for the Commission. "I want to do what I can to see this Programme through to success."

-x-

They went together back to the dormitory, which was just as well, as General Selena wanted to speak to them both about the new event added to the schedule. They would be mandatory guests at the joining of Major Eliwood Laise to Captain Lyn Hassar-_kizi_,and it was the desire of the Programme that Marth escort Eirika to the function. This was phrased as any other order and was dutifully acknowledged as such by Pilots 001 and 012.

That evening, Eirika learned from her brother that he was expected to escort Micaiah to the same function. It worked out neatly, she thought, though she wondered what women Ike and Roy might be taking along to the wedding.

There had not been the faintest hint, prior to Selena's announcement, that any wedding was upcoming for Eliwood and Lyn. Eirika wondered if there were more of these convenient events awaiting them in the near future.

The marriage of Alm and Cellica had been celebrated in the capital, with the Premier himself in attendance. The Magvel Union and the Republic of Elibe each sent a representative to this latest marriage for the pilot corps, but it was a decidedly low-key affair, held in Star City's only hotel rather than the splendor of Ivaldi Court. Eirika understood that this apparent decrease in Premier Sephiran's interest in his pilots was an ill omen, but she couldn't even guess as to what precisely it portended for them.

But Eliwood and Lyn both looked handsome in their wedding crowns, and they both seemed happy enough that Eirika sincerely offered up her best wishes to them. There were enough guests, even at this "intimate" wedding, that Eirika did not feel too much attention was upon her- even when she danced a few numbers with Marth. He was a decent dancer, she thought as she breathed in the scent of cedar soap. He didn't have Hector's exuberance on the dance floor, but at least Marth didn't step on her feet the way Ike once had.

"We can leave now, if you'd like," he whispered to her after the third dance.

"We don't need to rush, Marth. I'm enjoying myself."

"We could have some drinks at my apartment." He asked it in the same tone he used when suggesting another run-through in the lunar lander simulator; the Hero of Space showed a striking lack of finesse when it came to handling women as _women_ and not as pilots, engineers, or politicians.

"All right."

Three icons graced the wall of his apartment, the first thing anyone might see upon entering. This non-conformist gesture surprised Eirika. The Old Rites weren't expressly banned, but they certainly weren't encouraged; in Magvel the state had a tendency to "accidentally" demolish temples and re-use the granite and marble in train stations. More than that, Eirika remembered, or thought she remembered, a particularly vivid quote concerning whether or not the heavens were filled with "squabbling gods," the answer being an emphatic _no_.

"I never said those things," Marth said, almost as though he'd guessed the her thoughts. "I never even thought them. Other people put those words down with my name attached."

"I see."

"I do know how this works," he said, and Eirika heard again that bitter edge to his words. "If the state wants to convince people of something, anything, they put me before the microphones and have me say it. Or they just put it out on the wires and claim that I said it."

It was true, so patently true that Eirika could not give any protest.

"I never said this, either," Marth added.

He handed her a magazine, a glossy publication aimed at young wives and mothers, the sort of thing that Eirika rarely glanced at, much less picked up. The primary feature was a gushing interview with the Hero of Space, one that focused not on piloting or science but on the details of his personal life. The usual unrevealing details, Eirika thought as she looked over a quote in which Lieutenant Colonel Anriou described his ideal life companion- honest, dedicated, concerned with social justice and high moral standards.

"There are some girls like this in our piloting program," the sentence concluded.

"I never said this," Marth repeated, and struck the page in question with the backs of his fingers. "But there it is, and here we both are."

"Ah."

Eirika waited, expecting that he might have something more to say about it. He did not, and he left the magazine open on the side table while he fixed them both something to drink. Eirika accepted the glass of chilled vodka laced with honey and orange peel. Orange again, she thought. Perhaps it _was _something he liked.

She did not dally long in his apartment- only so that the eyes watching her might report back that Pilot 012 had time enough in the company of Pilot 001 to share a few drinks, but no more.

-x-

When the red light flashed again on her phone, Eirika hesitated. What bad news did the call bring this time? Did it concern her brother, her crewmates, the fate of the _Peace _mission itself? Had the Lopts won the race to the moon? Eirika shook off the moment of doubt and chided herself; the red light brought bad news, good news, and news that was neither good nor bad but merely of high import.

_All pilots report to the Head Office._

All pilots? This news must be of high import, then, Eirika thought.

Generals Duessel and Mycen both awaited them with the impassive faces of men with nothing good to convey. Mycen broke the news, and the old soldier of Valencia did not sound entirely dispassionate this time.

"Premier Sephiran has resigned for the good of the nations, effective immediately. President Hardin of the Eastern Islands has accepted the duties of Premier, and we can trust on his patriotism and sound judgement to guide us henceforth."

In the brief silence that followed this incredible statement, Eirika fought the urge to look at the faces of her fellow pilots and see their reactions.

"Our mission objectives remain unchanged," said Duessel, and there was the slightest decrease of tension in the room then. The race to Luna would continue; they were not to be swept aside with Sephiran's regime. Yet the pilots did not move, nor did they respond to the generals, until one among them seized the moment.

"In the name of the peoples of the Free Nations, we will fulfill the mission given to us."

It was the first time in Eirika's recollection that Pilot 001 had spoken for them as their leader.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

_Author's note_:

So, we have a surprising marriage, a lukewarm made-to-order romance, and a sudden change at the top of the government. Not to mention the shenanigans with the altered pictures. What next?

Those in the know about the Soviet Space program may be going "aha!" about some details here, ranging from the "missing" pilot candidates to the manufactured quotes. Full notes to be posted on my LJ... eventually.


	14. Project Fire Emblem

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Fourteen: Project Fire Emblem_

The television in the common room now played an endless string of denunciations of the former premier and the ways he had ill-served the United Free Nations. Sephiran had expended great resources on secret projects that did not benefit the people. His covert agenda ran contrary to the purpose of the UFN. He had authorized terrible abuses of the free peoples, ranging from the inhumane conditions of the Elibean work camps to the "experiments" conducted at universities throughout the UFN. He used UFN nations as pawns in a diplomatic chess game, turning his head when the Eastern Islands were overrun by the Lopts. And he had placed non-humans and part-humans throughout the government, placed them in positions where they could destroy the UFN from within.

On a certain level, Eirika did not believe the accusations. She was all too familiar with the state's propaganda machine when it came to non-persons, and the horror tales regarding Premier Sephiran sounded too much like an amplified echo of the lies told about a disgraced comrade of her father's. But as she heard the denunciations, over and over again, Eirika had to admit the accusations touched upon so many of the issues she'd wondered over lately. Pictures and press releases, truth and fiction...

Star City pretended to be immune to the political turmoil outside, but within the temple walls of the pilot dormitory, things weren't especially happy. Pilot 008 was grounded; during a routine scan the doctors found a spot on his lung that looked to be tuberculosis. This, coupled with Lyn's announcement soon after her hasty marriage to Eliwood that the Programme could expect another "space baby," meant that the entire crew of _Aureola_ was lost to the flight rotation. Eirika grieved the loss- even if Lyn and Eliwood _weren't_ exactly who and what she'd assumed them to be, she'd known of them only (and always!) as decent people and loyal compatriots. And, after all, she'd no proof at all that Lyn and Eliwood had any part of these alleged frozen-cadet experiments at Aqu'lea- she had only rumors and one blurred photograph.

The generals already had enacted measured to fill the gaps in the corps; they'd admitted a new crop of pilot candidates, ranging from the expected (Chief Engineers Finn and Innes) to the novel (a female jet pilot from the Eastern Islands). Eirika would have liked to spend time with the newcomers, but training for _Peace_ kept her too busy to see much of them. The Generals had the good sense to place Eliwood in charge of the newcomers' training; if he couldn't fly, he could certainly guide those who would. Still, even if these changes were positive, the Star City that Eirika had first known was slipping into history.

-x-

Eirika had to take out the dress uniform again for another funeral- this time, for one of the three shadowy Chief Designers. _A_, the mastermind of the UFN's robotic space programme, had died of natural causes after a long and fulfilling career. Now that Chief Designer Athos was safely deceased, his name and accomplishments were made public. His biography, on the other hand, came out only in elliptical fragments that added up to an odd picture indeed.

"These photographs... it looks like Athos was an old man at the beginning of the century..."

Eirika's _Peace_ comrades looked at her with identical expressions of warning. That was all it took to confirm her growing suspicions. Athos, then, was one of these non-humans placed in a high position by Sephiran, either born of beast lineage or "modified" through the Lopts' own terrible experiments upon "lesser creatures." Non-humans had been deliberately admitted to the Human Spaceflight Programme, non-humans created the Programme itself... were the other Chief Designers likewise plants, pieces in Sephiran's strange game?

It was disturbing enough that she confronted Marth about it at the first opportunity.

"You've seen the other Chief Designers- they came to the _Starlight _launch."

"All the Chief Designers were intimately involved with the Programme at its start," he said. "The structure we have now didn't exist- they made it. _G_ was the one speaking to me from the ground during _Starlight_; there was no one else trusted to do it."

Eirika flinched; she'd heard many times over the recordings of the man code-named "Shadow" speaking to _Starlight_, encouraging its young pilot as humanity broke free of the bounds of gravity for the first time in history.

"What is he?"

"I don't care what he is. What he's done has been nothing but good for us. Not just for me, for all of us."

As commander to pilot, he ended the conversation there. Even though Eirika sensed there was a great deal more that 001 wanted to say on the subject of the Chief Designers.

-x-

When the next envelope arrived from the Ministry of Truth, Eirika realized she'd been anticipating it. She slit open the envelope with something akin to excitement- only to be greeted by a photograph of some charred and twisted _thing_, the wreckage of some horrible disaster. She stared at it for a moment without grasping what it might even be, and when she did understand what it was, she didn't _want_ to believe it. Eirika turned the photograph over and read the scrap of paper pasted to the back- a terse report on how Pilot 004 had been turned into a carbonized mass measuring 120 centimeters by 80 centimeters, with only a few bone chips to show that mass had ever been a human being.

"What's the point to all of this?"

There was something else in the envelope, another photograph. A snapshot of a very young Pilot 001 conversing with a older, bearded man. The man's face was blurred, and Eirika knew at once that he must be the mysterious Chief Designer _G_. But from the pose- the almost paternal way that _G_ stood in that photo, the way the adolescent Marth looked up at _G _with what could only be called _trust_, the pair knew each other well. Extremely well.

_What he's done has been nothing but good for us..._

So why was this photograph of Marth and _G _juxtaposed with the dreadful remains of 004? If the intent of the "Ministry of Truth" were to erode Eirika's confidence in the _Peace_ mission and her own safety, they were doing an excellent job of it.

-x-

Eirika and her commander had just finished another grueling set of tests in the lunar-landing simulator when Pilot 002 intercepted them.

"We're talking now," he said, characteristically blunt.

"I'd rather not," replied Marth, but Alm ignored him and appealed directly to Eirika.

"The engineers are saying you both have a nine in ten chance of not making it back to Terra. _Nine in ten_. That's the worst odds they've come up with-"

"Since _Astra_," Marth interrupted him.

"Exactly."

Eirika decided to attack this problem the way an engineer might.

"What's the weak point in the mission sequence, Alm? The landing?"

"Getting back off the surface. Those engines have never been fired in lunar gravity- we don't know how to simulate it. Even if you two make it down there in one piece, odds are you'll stay down there and Roy comes home alone. How's that sound?"

The Valencian pilot sounded passionate, even angry. He sounded even more angry when Marth switched to the Islands dialect, making the conversation incomprehensible to Eirika save for a scattering of words.

"Is that what you argued about at the wake?" she asked, after Alm had left- red-faced and shaking his head.

"Alm tends to get excited," Marth replied. "That's why Cellica is such a good match for him."

"What do you think the odds really are?"

"Of accomplishing the landing? Fifty-fifty." His voice betrayed no hint of dismay. "Of returning home? We're pushing experimental machines to their limits in ways that no one has ever tried before. Of course there's risk. It's why we exist."

He really did think of himself as a pilot as completely as any of the others did, Eirika thought. It just _meant _something else to Marth, and she was glad, really, that she didn't view piloting in that light.

-x-

Two weeks before the launch date, the _Peace_ crew was sequestered in sterile quarters so that no head colds, no stomach viruses might disrupt the mission or cause a last-minute change in pilots. Eirika had to bid farewell to her brother, who went to live in similar circumstances with his backup crew. Ephraim was dry-eyed and a little distant, and only the warm touch of his fingers upon her cheek communicated to her how much this separation affected him. Of course, it might be a final farewell for them both, unless some stroke of fortune placed them in the _Peace_ capsule together... or grounded both for the duration of the mission. Eirika didn't truly hope for some illness or freak accident, but some part of her still cherished the idea of climbing down the ladder of the lunar lander to join her brother on Luna's scarred surface.

She distracted herself from these thoughts by watching her comrades bid farewell to their fellow pilots. Marth's elder sister, who had joined the Programme as a flight surgeon after her release from a Lopt prison camp, was there to see her brother off, but Roy had no family present. It occurred to Eirika how isolated most of the pilots were from the world beyond Star City- how few of them had living parents or siblings, how the spouses and loved ones they did have all seemed associated with the Programme in some way. Leaf, for one, had been raised in the center of the Programme, and Eirika had heard that Celice and Roy were similar cases- orphans of martyred parents who had been co-opted into the "family" of the Human Spaceflight Programme years before _Starlight_ ever launched.

She asked Roy about his orphan status that night, and he shrugged it off with something close to unconcern.

"My parents gave me up after I was born- or rather, I believe my mother died, and my father couldn't raise me alone. They were both soldiers in the resistance, and that's all I know. I've never learned their names."

"Did anyone step forward to... well, to claim you, after you landed?" After _Hope_, when young Major Roy Gilleroth was announced to the world as the Programme's latest achiever, surely some family member would have recognized him...

"No. I doubt they'd know me. 'Gilleroth' isn't even my family name, it's just the name I was given. It means 'red-haired' in the Lycian dialect."

He seemed remarkably unaffected by all this, so Eirika decided to let that subject drop. How fortunate she was, she reflected, to have been born on Magvel and not one of the continents that had suffered direct invasions by the Lopts. How fortunate she was to know the faces and names of her own parents- now gone, but fixed forever in her memory.

-x-

Pre-launch isolation was something of a joke, Eirika decided after several days in crew quarters. They slept in isolation, and took meals only from a special kitchen, but all three of them still had to venture out for additional tests on the simulators. As Eirika worked one night over a review of the things that had gone wrong in the landing simulator that day, a question she'd pondered for years finally crossed her lips.

"What's the significance of Project_ Fire Emblem_? Why is that the code phrase for the Programme?"

"The government has set guidelines for how code names are formed," Roy supplied immediately. "The first word starts with an 'F,' which designates an Air Force project, and the 'E' in the second word denotes the level of classification."

Marth, though, shook his head to object to this answer.

"Project _Fire Emblem_ isn't the code name for the Programme. It refers to the goals of the Programme."

"I don't understand," said Eirika, after thinking the distinction over for a moment.

"Project _Fire Emblem_ is the end, and the Programme is the means," said Marth, though he wouldn't explain in any greater detail. Neither Roy nor Eirika were satisfied by this.

"So, what are the goals of Project _Fire Emblem_?" asked Roy.

"Our mission's call sign is _Peace_," Marth said. "I think that says it well enough."

That night, as Eirika lay in her bed, she recalled that photograph of Marth gazing up at Chief Designer G with trust reflected in his entire pose. For one moment of hypnagogic insight, Eirika thought she was on the verge of understanding why Pilot 001 had been placed where he was in both the flight rotation and in history, but before it all did make sense to her, she toppled over the precipice of sleep.

-x-

Two days before launch, Eirika and her commander were still grappling with the landing simulator as the Sim Crew threw one nasty set of errors after another at them. Once again, the screen in front of them showed the cratered field of Luna as they approached, once again, the data in front of them looked ominous. The information on their descent trajectory didn't make sense, a sign the transmission between the crew and the ground was degraded. Eirika's gut told her that they needed to abort the landing and get back up to rejoin Roy in the Falcon III, but the Sim Crew wasn't giving them the order.

She glanced at Marth, who continued to steer the lander according to the view out their simulated "window" in spite of the garbage data in front of them. Eirika bit her lip; wasn't Marth going to push the "abort" button? He was waiting, she realized, for the order from the ground- but it wasn't coming. Not in time, not with the two-second delay between Terra and Luna factored in to their communications.

"_Peace_, we recommend you-"

And the simulator screen froze. The data in front of Eirika's eyes indicated they'd dropped below the altitude of the lunar surface. In plain speech, they'd crashed and now were dead. To die in the simulator always rattled her a little, and she could feel the quiver in her voice as they agreed to try for another round.

Eirika expected this failure would be put down as "crew error," and she was just a little miffed at Marth for his refusal to take action in the face of such a crisis, his refusal to go against orders. When she voiced those complaints to Marth that evening in the crew quarters, his response left quieted her concerns... somewhat.

"That scenario wasn't testing us, it was testing the ground crew and their ability to make a call. It's just another learning experience."

In the space of a few days, there would be absolutely no room for "learning experiences." Eirika hoped they all would be ready for that moment.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

**Author's note**:

So, we get ever closer to the mystery of what Sephiran and his Chief Designers are up to. As for Eirika, who has been treated pretty much like a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed #$%) by everyone in the Programme... well, she has enough puzzle pieces in front of her to figure something out, but it's not likely to be correct quite yet. The answer to all the mysteries is not merely "out there," but UP there...

This features the usual mix of inspirations from both the USA and USSR moon-shot programs- simulator shenanigans on one end, political quicksand on the other.


	15. Peace Sets Sail

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Fifteen_: _Peace Sets Sail_

On one level, it was all familiar. Eirika was suited and helmeted, strapped into her crew couch inside the Falcon III, perched atop the great Ashera rocket that would hurl her into lunar orbit for the second time. The rocket, filled with a mix of liquid fuels that, if detonated on the pad, would have the force of an atomic weapon, expanded and contracted its metal skin like something breathing, something alive. She'd been here before, and yet there was no way that something this extraordinary could possibly be routine. All the little changes between _Gemstone_ and _Peace_ startled her even now, right now to the design of her pressure suit. She'd been surprised to see her family name, Sieglinde, embroidered on the collar of her suit instead of the expected 012.

"We're all flown pilots," Roy said of the change, and it did make sense. They were no longer state secrets. As soon as they were safely clear of the launchpad, the goals of their mission would be announced, and once they'd landed on Luna, their egress to the surface would actually be televised. Perhaps that accounted for Eirika's sense of apprehension- she knew that, this time, the world would truly be watching.

The Chief Designers certainly were. She'd caught a glimpse of the man she recognized as _G_ when the crew had exited the van that took them to the launch pad. Standing beside _G_ was a dark-haired youth whose face was as childish as Roy's, and Eirika knew without being told that this "young" man was Chief Designer _S_. Had the mysterious pair come to see the ultimate realization of _G_'s work, the success of Project _Fire Emblem_... whatever that was?

Or had _S_ merely come to witness the fiery failure of _G_'s plans?

Ephraim had slipped in to see her before the launch, had whispered a final caution to her, after she was already suited up and beyond the reach of his potential contagion.

"_G_ is Sephiran's tool, unless it was the other way around. And you're riding with one of his pets. I'd rather fly with a Lopt as my co-pilot."

He looked as though the past two weeks had been excessively hard on him. Eirika wondered if the Ministry of Truth had been sending her brother letters.

-x-

Launch itself was as familiar as it was extraordinary; Eirika, was, after all, the only one of the crew to have experienced the Ashera rocket's power, and she could measure the difference between the Ashera's ride and that of the earlier Pegasus rockets in the expressions of her comrades.

"This isn't bad," said Roy, his voice just audible above the roar. "You can tell the Pegasus is a ballistic missile from the way it fights you."

"Ashera doesn't fight. We're too small for her to care about us," Eirika replied, and hoped her smile would let Roy know she was mostly joking.

So, while the flight was as she remembered- the rising G-forces followed by the sharp forward jolt- the experience was different, like watching two performances of a play rather than a repeat screening of a film. This time, when they reached earth orbit and the protective shroud over the Falcon III capsule fell away, they had an immediate duty- rendezvous with the lunar lander that had been tucked safely beneath them in the rocket stack and now floated free, awaiting capture.

The lander- formally dubbed the "Heron" shortly before launch, apparently for its stilt-like legs- was controlled by the ground, but it was the duty of Roy as the senior pilot to capture this Heron and dock it safely to the Falcon III. It was the same maneuver he would use to bring Eirika and Marth both back to Terra once the Heron craft rose from the surface of Luna. Assuming it did. Eirika watched Roy as the Elibean guided the two crafts together with an expert hand, and she thought back on Alm's words and wondered what it would _do_ to Roy if he returned to Terra alone.

"Perfect," Marth commented once Roy had completed the docking. "All right, Eirika. Let's get in there and make sure she's in working order."

The inside of the Heron seemed improbably small for two people to live and work for two days, but Eirika knew how to make the most of it as living space after so many trips to the factory and so many sessions in the simulator. To tumble "upside down" through the docking hatch and bring the Heron to life in zero gravity was exciting- _here_ was something she'd never done before. She wondered if Micaiah had enjoyed it nearly as much during her first-ever testing of a Heron in space. This was Eirika's Heron now; Marth might be the one at the controls, but the craft was Eirika's machine, the same way the Falcon III was Roy's, and she felt an unexpected affection for it as she checked it out from top to bottom. Or bottom to top- direction in zero-G being purely a matter of perspective.

Once the Heron was verified functional, they were allowed to leave "parking orbit" and venture off toward Luna. Again, familiar tasks for Eirika, yet made new by the reactions of her senior crew-mates. So it was with the most mundane tasks. Roy had never used the improved food packets that debuted on _Aureola_. Marth had neither eaten nor slept in space- on the _Starlight_ mission, there hadn't been any time for either. It amused Eirika to be the veteran and expert on so many details of interplanetary living.

What struck her, though, was Marth's reaction to the sight of Terra, perfectly framed through the window.

"After all the times I've told the story of how Terra looks from space... I think I'd forgotten how beautiful it really is."

No, Eirika decided, however _familiar _space might become, it wasn't something a person might ever be_ used to_. There always would be something to catch one off guard. She thought on this well into the appointed time of their resting period, as she floated in her mesh sleeping restraints like a moth caught in a cobweb. Each time she opened her eyes, Eirika caught a glimpse of some new strange thing- the way Roy's unruly red hair floated around his face as he slept, the way Marth had curled up and wedged himself against the bulkhead, as though he didn't like the sensation of drifting free. Eventually her thoughts ran down, in the manner of a dying clock, and Eirika surrendered to sleep even as the Falcon and the Heron made their silent progress towards Luna.

It might be the last good sleep she ever enjoyed.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's note: Yes, Chief Designer _S _is, indeed, Soren.


	16. Upon the Bay of Rainbows

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

_Chapter Sixteen: Upon the Bay of Rainbows_

* * *

After a flight of four days, five hours, twenty-one minutes, and seven seconds, the Heron lander undocked from the Falcon III and hovered alone above the surface of Luna, the place intended as the Heron's native habitat.

"May fortune smile upon you," came Roy's voice through the intercom as they left him behind.

Eirika was almost driven to reply, "I hope we see you again," but she held it back. This moment, like others in the flight, was being officially recorded and would likely be broadcast to the peoples of Terra.

"And on you as well, 007," she replied. Now that the two crafts were separated, the crew of the Heron responded to the call sign_ Peace_, while Roy answered to his original designation of Pilot 007- a sign that they, not he, were the key part of the mission. If Roy was slighted by this, he didn't show it, any more than he ever showed disappointment over not going to the lunar surface. It was a three-pilot mission, and he had his role and served it to the best of his abilities, and that appeared to be quite satisfactory for Roy.

Perhaps some pilots really were less complicated than others. Eirika didn't have time to mull that over, though- not when the goal of _Peace_ was so close at hand.

-x-

The Heron was stocked with whatever they might need for a two-day journey- reserves of water and food, the custom-fit "back packs" they'd need to venture around on the lunar surface, color cameras to record their visit, a number of mementoes to place on the surface, and the specialized tools and equipment for collecting geological samples. And, of course, the rover. But with weight being the limiting factor on whether or not the Heron would ever rise from Luna on the journey home, and with a substantial number of rocks being factored into the estimated return weight, there wasn't a lot of fuel on board. There was enough for one attempt at a landing, and no more.

As the Heron settled into a low orbit over Luna, Eirika became aware that she was well out of her zone of familiarity. She watched the curvature of Luna's surface flatten out as the distant craters below them transformed into mountains that loomed quite close, so close that she imagined the Heron's spindle legs would brush against them in passing. Yet still, they were not someplace that no human had ventured. Ike and Micaiah had already experienced this. It was that final twelve minutes of the journey that was unprecedented in the history of humankind.

As the Heron began that twelve-minute descent, Eirika had no time at all to worry about events back on the small blue disk of Terra, about the fallen premier and his plans, about the Chief Designers and their schemes. She had no time to worry about Marth and his allegiance to _G_- she was too busy spouting off trajectory data, altitude readings, and everything else she could glean from the computer data before her. She, as the pilot, was the eyes, ears, and mouth of this being called _Peace_. The hands on the controls were Marth's... and the brain of the organism was the Heron's onboard computer.

As the first of a series of alarms flared up on the panel, Eirika felt her perception narrow to encompass only what was in front of her. There was not a second's time to glance out the window at the approaching lunar surface. If she didn't settle these alarms... but the alarms were nuisances all, rather than symptoms of a failing spacecraft. Yet clearing them took time, and when Eirika finally did have a moment to look out upon Luna, she saw something far more distressing than a red-lit control panel.

The automated guidance system was steering them right into a field of impassable boulders- some the size of automobiles, some the size of houses, some larger still. Their designated landing site had no apparent place to plant the legs of the Heron- not if they wanted the Heron to stay upright for even a moment. They would have to activate manual controls, thought Eirika, but even as she looked to Marth for affirmation, she found he was already doing so. Without waiting for orders.

Without explaining to ground control what he was doing. Eirika's eyes darted to the fuel gauge; there was less than four minutes remaining to them. Four minutes and going, a guidance system gone awry... and someone who _wasn't_ Ephraim in charge of the ship and their lives. Eirika forced her attention back onto the trajectory readings and began to reel off data; it was the only support she had in that moment. And, besides that, it was her duty.

Lower, then lower, the Heron scooted along above the crests of the menacing boulders. Ground control was restless; Eirika heard the tension in the voice that pointed out they had sixty seconds of fuel remaining. But there was a clear spot, or at least a clearer spot, ahead of them...

"Thirty seconds," came the distant voice in her headset. Of course, there was that two-second delay, coming from the ground, so that meant even less time remained to them.

"One way or another, we'll touch Luna," she heard Marth reply, and in that moment he sounded strangely like her brother.

She saw streamers of dust out the window now, great swirls of dust sent up by the force of their engines. Eirika remembered then the predictions that the surface of Luna was nothing but an ocean of dust, that anyone and anything that tried to land would be swallowed by the dust of the ages...

She forced her attention back to the fuel gauge. Twenty seconds or less...

And a new light appeared on her panel, a reassuring brilliant blue.

"Contact!" she called out; the probe on the bottom of the Heron had touched something solid.

The landing was so gentle that Eirika felt nothing, nothing but the realization that her body truly had some weight again.

"Greetings to the peoples of the world from the Bay of Rainbows. _Peace_ has come to Luna."

He said it smoothly, brightly, sounding very much like the boy who called down to all Terra from the confines of _Starlight_. As Eirika heard a brief burst of cheering crackle through her headset- including a shout of encouragement from Roy- she looked at the solemn and pale profile of her commander. So _that_ was was the sound of the pilot who'd just managed the most amazing landing in the history of human flight.

Marth turned toward her, and a quick, strange smile flashed across his face for a moment. He reached out for her- not in a quick clap upon the back, as her brother might have done, but with a tentative brush of his hand against her shoulder.

"We did it," he said, and _now_ he was neither a stoic test pilot nor the confident envoy of humanity's triumph.

"That's it. We've done it," she replied, and even as the words left, Eirika wondered why that moment felt like an ending and not a beginning.

Outside, the light of an early lunar morning cast long shadows on the plain. The hostile ball of battered rock seemed pleasant and inviting. And, in that moment, it was entirely theirs.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Inspiration drawn from the landing of the US Apollo crafts, but most specifically from Apollo 11 and 12.


	17. Green Glass

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Seventeen: Green Glass_

Eirika missed the first words spoken by a human standing upon the lunar surface; she was too busy struggling with the backpack she would need to survive out there in Luna's airless environment. When she, in turn, descended the Heron's ladder to set a bootprint in the fine powder that made their landing site, she wasted no time in broadcasting her own first statement from this new territory.

"May we see this scarred world as a place of infinite possibility."

Perhaps it was, but what Eirika's eyes took in was a landscape more stark than the most forbidding deserts of Magvel. Like her first glimpse of Luna's far side, that shattered vista of craters upon craters, the Bay of Rainbows was compelling in its desolation.

"Look at all these beautiful rocks," she added, hoping that Professor Saleh was listening in. "I think they have a story for us."

And they went to work. Eirika planted the flag of the United Free Nations in the lunar dust, then Marth set down a plaque commemorating the mission, its date of arrival, and the peaceful intentions of humans. They had a few more items to leave upon Luna and had just set down a pair of medallions, one to commemorate Pilot 004 and another for Pilot 010, when ground control announced that Premier Hardin was on the line. Eirika straightened up as quickly as she dared and stood at attention while Marth handled the call; she only got a "Yes, sir" in to the premier before the call ended. And then it was back to their checklists of tasks, for every second counted.

Work fast, but not too fast- they'd use air too rapidly if they weren't careful. Marth had already scooped up a number of geological "contingency samples" that would have to suffice for Professor Saleh and the rest if some emergency forced them to leave ahead of schedule. But they unfolded the rover and all its functions checked out, and so Eirika and Marth embarked upon their planned excursion, rolling through the Bay of Rainbows at a steady nine miles per hour. Only then, in the passenger seat... did Eirika have time to think for a moment about what they were actually doing.

The fine dark dust, the texture of talcum powder, that coated the white surface of her gloves was the dust of Luna. That same dust sprayed out in improbable arcs from their rover wheels; Luna had no air to impede its fall. No air, and only a fraction of Terra's gravity. The fall of one mote of dust was a new experience. Eirika relayed all this to the ground as eloquently as she could, as Marth focused on navigating the rover on their carefully plotted course to the section of the Bay of Rainbows that was said to hold the most geologic interest.

A flash of green caught Eirika's eye- color, here on the grayscale moon of that small blue world somewhere above them? She asked for permission to stop and collect it, and the ground crew agreed easily. Marth stopped the rover; Eirika stepped carefully down from the rover seat and, using her claw-armed collection tool, plucked the shining bit of green from Luna's dark dust. It was glass- glass in the geologic sense of being amorphous fused silica. It bore a marked resemblance to the pale green lumps left in the wake of a nuclear test. Eirika offered up the tentative explanation that it was the memento of a meteor strike, and the geologists sitting back on Luna seemed to accept this. She wished Saleh might break in, assuming he was on this shift. The professor might have some insight into this odd find.

She saw more than a few glistening specks of green in the dust as the rover carried them toward the mountains that rimmed the Bay of Rainbows. On airless Luna, the distant horizon appeared as sharply defined as near objects; Eirika thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, causing her to see a familiar cityscape in the jagged piles of rock- a cluster of domed buildings surrounding a high tapering tower. Yet, as they grew closer, the "skyline" didn't resolve into anything that seemed natural; the domes did not become volcanic cinder cones, the central tower did not become some sort of lunar butte. And the dust beneath the rover wheels gave way to a distinct path of crushed stone.

"How are you, Eirika? Eirika?"

Heavens forgive her, she had almost forgotten about Roy. Poor Roy, up there all alone in the Falcon III, quite literally the loneliest specimen of humanity at that moment. He sounded so earnestly _normal_ in that moment that it jarred Eirika.

"I could tell you, Roy, but I don't think I have the words."

Roy took this as an indication that they were having a fine time down there on Luna. Eirika looked up, in case she might see the shimmer of the Falcon capsule as it passed by, but she saw nothing.

"Next time you come by, Roy, let me know what this place looks like from the air. I mean, from orbit."

No air, she reminded herself. No wind. No trees or flowers. No rushing water. No life. But there was this city... nonetheless. Five-sided fingers of basalt formed great arches over the path, almost like the ribcage of some tremendous beast. Triumphal arches, welcoming the heroes of some alien race back to the capital?

Eirika, operating on pilot's intuition, continued to relay messages that were truthful but not entirely... accurate. Marth for his own part had nothing of note to say until they reached the base of the great central tower, at which point he announced that they were through driving for a while. Then, Eirika heard the three-tone beep in her headset that indicated a private transmission.

"We're not the first here," she said, almost afraid to speak those momentous words. How private was private, anyway?

"We're the first humans on Luna," Marth said, remarkably unmoved by this entire revelation.

"Is there anyone... here?" Eirika craned her head as far back as she dared as she took in the vista of this massive tower.

"No. Not for eleven hundred years." He sounded so certain of this, as certain as he was of the equations in their calculus lessons.

Eirika wondered, for a moment, why she wasn't afraid. Had the entire experience, from the landing onward, simply been more than one human mind and body might process and still retain the ability for fear, for joy? Or was this all some surreal dream, born of uncomfortable sleep in the Heron lander?

Or were the ancient tales of early Magvel true- did Luna hold the cities of the dead? There were no shades here, any more than there was a single blade of grass to be found in the crushed-basalt streets. But hands and tools had worked elaborate patterns into the dark surface of the tower's walls. Eleven hundred years... there was no telltale weathering of age here, no erosion of water or wind- only the subtler damage left by a constant rain of micrometeorites.

At the base of the tower, Eirika spied another chunk of green glass, but she had no time to collect it. Marth was already on the bottom step of the tower's spiraling stairway. The commander's checklist must have very different directions than the one she was given, Eirika thought. Marth was moving with a purpose, and like a good second officer, Eirika fell in behind.

The tower stairs were slow going in pressure suits, even with the weak gravity allowing them to bounce upward. If the stairs were designed to human scale, Eirika might have found them impossible, but these stairs- like all else in the city- were far more wide and broad than any human might need. They ascended one bouncing step at a time, up to the height of a five-story Terran building; three times they paused to sip water from their packs, and Eirika hoped the tiny amounts of liquid would be enough to see them through this excursion. To say none of this had been in her training... well, that was an understatement of the first degree. The commands of the ground crew, exhorting her to monitor her oxygen consumption and to mind the heat, just made this sudden jaunt into urban exploration even more bizarre.

Eirika could feel perspiration pooling in her boots by the time they reached the tower's top. The tower had no ceiling, just five delicate rays of basalt forming an ornamental cap... just like the ornament atop the ancient temple of Valni. At its center rested what, to Eirika's eyes, could only be called a sarcophagus, hewn of the same fine-grained basalt. Despite the overall scale of the temple, this sarcophagus seemed the right size for a human child.

"We've reached the endpoint of this excursion," she heard Marth radio back to Terra. "We'll rest here, collect some key samples, and head back to the base."

"Affirmative. Please deploy the memorial."

Marth took out a white zippered pouch, identical to the one in which their landing-site plaque had been carried. Eirika had been told that they'd place the second plaque to mark the most distant point of their adventures, but this plaque didn't look anything like the one they'd left at the landing site. It was a shield-shaped piece of metal, adorned with what looked like five gems. The arrangement of stones matched the five-part symmetry of the structure around them.

Marth set down the shield in a depression on the sarcophagus lid. It fit exactly; as Marth stepped back, the gems on the shield blazed up with a rainbow of light. Eirika shielded her eyes from the unexpected colors; surely that burst of red, blue, green, and gold was so bright that the telescopes on Terra pointed up at them had seen it? That Roy had seen it from orbit? But Roy, if he was on their side of Luna, had no comment on it. When the lights died, Eirika could see that the sarcophagus lid, which at first had appeared melded to the base in a seamless whole, was slightly ajar. There was been no sound, but of course there was no sound at all here. No sound, no wind, no water... just this airless dead city with an opened coffin at its center.

On Terra's gravity, two fairly small adults would never have been able to move that slab of basalt, but on Luna's gravity it was possible. Even so, Eirika was sure her fingernails had torn inside of her gloves. But the slab soon lay on the floor of this... temple? Tomb? The slab was on the floor, and the opened sarcophagus awaited them.

"Let's get that specimen," Marth said then.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: I wasn't going to re-invent "One small step..." for this thing! But I did half-inch the "beautiful rocks" comment from John Young, commander of Apollo 16.

Oh, yeah. Dead city on the moon. Well, you knew this was going someplace odd, right? And no, I don't think the chunks of green glass are from meteor strikes. Just sayin'.


	18. Specimen Collecting

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Eighteen: Specimen Collecting_

Dark and leathery, elliptical in shape, it brought to mind a deflated egg- or the egg case of a shark. A tremendous shark, for this casing could have held a small child. Eirika regarded it with a strange calm, for all that she was now certain that either she was unconscious and dreaming... or that the mission planners and her commander were all out of their minds.

"Whatever we do, we can't rupture the casing," Marth told her.

"Understood."

Slowly, carefully, they were able to get this... chrysalis... out of its tomb. Eirika wrapped it in one of the metallic tissue blankets they carried for protection from the sun's glare, and they took turns carrying the bundle on the interminable trip down the giants' staircase. At last they'd finished descending the tower, and Eirika loitered in its shade drinking her water while Marth carried the chrysalis out to the rover. It fit quite neatly in the rear basket.

"Let's get back to the base," he said, as though everything was proceeding quite normally.

Eirika fell back on her training then; she reported her geologic observations to the ground crew and chatted lightly with Roy whenever he happened to break in with a chipper transmission. The loneliest human was doing quite well from his vantage point above Luna; the thirsty and sweat-soaked moonwalkers had nothing at present to say to one another. Eirika and Marth unpacked the rover's gear in silence; she tended the smaller samples, including her green glass, and he dealt with the equipment... and the largest of their samples. The rover itself would remain there, another monument to humankind's first visit to what was very clearly someone else's home planet. Eirika ran her finger through the thick layer of dust upon the rover's headlamp.

"You were a good machine," she said to it. "I didn't need seat belts after all. Thank you."

The Eirika of earlier days would have devoutly thanked the designers and engineers for their efforts on her behalf. The Eirika Sieglinde who stood upon the dark ground of Luna was feeling disenchanted with designers and their grand designs.

-x-

After this excursion to the surface, Eirika knew she would never again see the face of the Moon Maiden as an image of purity. The moon was a place of _dirt;_ they were covered in dust, fine dark dust that made the air inside the Heron smell almost like gunpowder once they'd closed the hatch and doffed their helmets. The once-pristine cabin of Eirika's pet craft was already streaked with filth.

Eirika chewed upon a fruit-and-nut bar while Marth gave his official summary on the day's events to ground control. He said nothing of cities, of sarcophagi, of shark-egg shellcases.

"Tell the Chief Designers that their work has brought success to Project _Fire Emblem_," he concluded as Eirika busied herself by polishing the control panels.

Then the transmission to Terra was over, and it was just the two of them- at least until the next interruption from Roy. Eirika was free to say exactly what she wanted to Marth, up to and including the words that good pilots didn't use.

"You knew that the mission objectives included tomb-robbing," was what she said to him. Quietly.

"Mission objectives included the retrieval of the sealed form of the Goddess of the Moon. If you want to call that tomb-robbing, fine."

"Why?"

"Because we couldn't take the chance the Lopts would unseal her first."

"Is this the fulfillment of Sephiran's plan?"

"Not exactly."

"Marth... can't you tell me what's going on? We're the only ones here, I'm not getting home without you, and you want me just to... play along blindly with something that- that isn't in any mission plan I've ever seen!"

She didn't want to cry. She was too wearied- and possibly too dehydrated- to cry. She ached from the arches of her foot to the sockets of her eyes, and now she could only rest her head against the fragile skin of the Heron and stare at her commander. For all the talk of virtues and the greater good, for all the gold and effort spent into the research component of the mission, the Human Spaceflight Programme was at its core a pure military operation. Send a man in to secure the target. Reach the target before the enemy could get to it.

"So that's all there is to it," she murmured to herself, not even aware that she'd spoken aloud until she saw Marth's reaction. "It's a war."

"I'm not going to make you any crazy-sounding promises, Eirika. I told you the goal of this mission was quite literally _peace_, and that's all I can say for now." He turned to face her, and she could see the smear of dark dust that marred one cheek. "If you don't trust me, there are a hundred different ways you can see to it that we never get back to Terra. Or that you're the only one that leaves Luna's surface."

He was absolutely correct; deep in the pocket on the left shoulder of her flight suit were the pills she'd been supplied with in the event the ascent engines did fail and left them trapped upon Luna. Eirika might easily prevent this "Moon Goddess" from ever reaching Terra. But if she were to take such drastic measures against the unknown dangers of this egg-case and its contents, the UFN had the crews and resources to smoothly dispatch a recovery mission to investigate. Eirika pictured, for a moment, how Ephraim might react to finding the scene of his sister's demise. She pictured Ephraim stumbling across the egg-case, or following the rover tracks to the remains of the dead city and becoming inextricably caught in the Chief Designers' plots.

This was the mission she'd been given. The mission the three of them had been given. Project _Fire Emblem _was not a burden that she could let slip from her own shoulders- not without facing up to the cold fact that someone else must surely come along and pick up that burden. Eirika looked at Marth for a long moment, taking in the solemn mouth and intense eyes, the long-lashed eyes set in a face so young that five days without shaving left him barely in need of a razor.

"I trust you."

She saw the way his shoulders relaxed, ever so slightly. So he hadn't been certain of her, not one hundred percent. Not until that moment.

Then the ground crew broke in on their conversation, reminding the crew of _Peace_ that it was time to sleep. Eirika and Marth drew down their respective window-shades, unfolded their sleeping hammocks, and retired for the brief artificial "night." Eirika did not sleep easily or well; she sensed, somehow, that there were _three _of them in the belly of the Heron now.

-x-

The next "day" the shadows on Luna were a little shorter. If they'd ventured out again, they would have found it a slightly different, equally revelatory world... but there were no reserves of water or oxygen for a second expedition. It was time for the Heron to fly.

Eirika considered herself suitably refreshed by their brief rest, enough so to confront the remainder of her mission as a pilot and a professional. She was not Pilot 012, nameless cog in the great machinations of Sephiran and _G _and whoever else might be involved. She was Captain Sieglinde of the Magvel Air Force. Well, Major Sieglinde, now. She and Marth had received word of their promotions already from General Mycen; if they failed to return to Terra now, at least they'd enjoyed a few hours of their new rank... for all the good that did them at present.

After the latest revelation regarding Project _Fire Emblem_, the ascent of the Heron from the lunar surface held no terror for Eirika. The engines fired as they were supposed to, and the Heron rose above Luna's dust with its crew and collection of samples in good shape. Above them waited the Falcon III, whose pilot sounded blessedly undamaged by the hours he'd spent in solitude above a dead globe. As the Falcon gripped the Heron in a perfect docking maneuver, Eirika thought only of how Roy would react to the largest of the "samples" they'd acquired.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: Well, Sephiran _did_ say back in Chapter 12 that the goal was to awaken the goddess of the moon...

Hopefully at this point some of the reasoning behind which characters were deployed where is making sense.


	19. Cracking the Shell

**Starchild**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Chapter Nineteen: Cracking the Shell_

Roy welcomed them back to the Falcon III with the air of a host inviting guests to his apartment; he fixed Marth and Eirika packets of juice even as he chided them for tracking lunar grime across the tidy interior of their floating home. Clearly he'd enjoyed his brief spell commanding the craft, loneliest human in the universe or not. Roy showed his engaging smile as he assisted them in hauling the trove of samples into the Falcon... right up until Marth brought the egg-case up through the docking hatch.

Roy's blue eyes seemed to go blank for a moment; despite the evident shock, Eirika sensed that Roy had a very good idea of what the mysterious object was. Roy's only question, blurted in an adolescent squeak, confirmed her suspicions.

"Are we going to be shot after this?"

"No," came the flat response from Marth.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes. Premier Hardin can't afford to lose us- not now." The argument was so simple, so cynical in its formulation, that Eirika found it more convincing than anything else that Marth might have said. The commander continued, without inflection, "Secure the payload, Major Gilleroth."

"Yes, sir."

"Eirika, power down the Heron."

Eirika murmured acknowledgement of the order and dropped down the hatch, feeling almost grateful for a few minutes away from her comrades and from the egg-case and its implications. It was calming, really, to shut down the functions of the Heron one at a time in the well-rehearsed sequence. So many months of her life had been spent in simulation of this moment, and now, once the last light on the control panel was dead and the fragile craft dark and silent, the Heron itself would be cast away, an empty shell floating in an infinite sea.

"Goodbye," she whispered, tracing one finger on the panel that had flashed so many warnings during their descent to the surface. "I think that I'll miss you."

But pilots did not have the leisure to shed tears, even for a worthy machine. Eirika went through the docking hatch for the last time, sealed it off, and then Roy pressed the button that cut the Heron loose. Eirika saw it tumble away, and she marveled again at how that little bubble of a craft with its spidery legs could have kept her alive in the lunar desert.

And now it was just the four of them cluttering up the Falcon III. The egg-case was stowed in one of their sleeping hammocks, which turned out to be where Eirika and Marth each spent most of the return journey. Whether it was the physical stresses of lunar exploration or the emotional peaks and troughs of the experience, it seemed that they'd both overshot the limits of peak performance, and the only remedy available was that they, like the abandoned lunar lander, shut down completely... if only for a few hours at a time.

Eirika woke from one of these naps to find Marth still asleep and Roy humming a tune to himself as he photographed the ever-increasing disk of Terra out their window.

"Sorry to be leaving you alone so often," Eirika offered him as an apology.

"It's not a problem. To be honest, I'm feeling... well, I've never been so grateful that this ship can fly itself if we need it to." Roy was looking pale and puffy-eyed, though Eirika knew the puffiness was only an effect of life in zero-gravity and ought to subside once they were home again. "Do you need anything to eat? There's still plenty of food."

"I'll have some soup, I guess."

So they each enjoyed a packet of beef-and-mushroom soup, though little conversation passed between them. Eirika felt herself grow steadily more alert during the meal, and she noticed that Roy's attention kept going to the egg-case stowed in the hammock that once had been his sleeping area.

"Old Athos would've given fifty years of his life to see this," he said, and Eirika heard a trace of sadness in his voice. She hoped that her comrade would volunteer more information about _A_ and Project Fire Emblem, but instead, Roy said, "You know how awards are given out in the Elibean military? If the failure of your mission means you get shot, you get acclaimed a Hero if you succeed. If failure would get you life in prison, they give you a lesser medal. And so on."

"You're wondering whether this outcome counts as success or failure?"

Roy bit his lip, and Eirika noticed, perhaps for the first time, how a scattering of freckles stood out on his pale cheeks.

"I've been very grateful to the Programme for the opportunities it's given me. I've known that someone with... with my background... would face some limitations in the military, and I never expected to go this far. I wouldn't have, without the help of _A_ and... and others. But I've seen the way that some people are viewed as... dispensable."

Eirika recognized the hesitant confession of the bright and courageous young pilot as an admission that, yes, Roy's background had to contain some non-human blood. The thought had already occurred to her, and so she instead decided to let the confession pass, and focus upon Roy's immediate concerns.

"But don't you-"

She saw Roy's eyes widen, and for a moment feared they'd left an open communication link with the ground control during the conversation. But then Eirika heard the "thump" of something knocking against the cabin wall, and she quickly realized that the movement hadn't come from their commander.

_Thump!_

The being inside the egg-case moved so violently that the case itself jumped in the hammock, hitting a second time against the wall. This knock was loud enough to wake Marth, who sat up in his own hammock.

"Marth, the case is starting to crack," Roy called out.

_Peace_'s commander extricated himself from the sleeping restraints and floated over to the source of the commotion. A third _thump_ sent the egg-case moving again, and this time Eirika could also see the cracks in the case as something tried to burst it from the inside.

"So, the high priests and scientists of Terra will be denied the awakening of their goddess."

He did reach for poetry at the oddest times, Eirika thought. Then a glimmer of memory surfaced, a scrap of verse scribbled onto the back of a calculus assignment. Eirika brushed that memory aside- not away entirely, but aside, to bring up when the immediate crisis was over.

And it did feel like a crisis unfolding there in the _Falcon_. Eirika had seen chicks and ducklings hatch, not in nature but under the bright lights and glass of an incubator, and the violence of egg-birth had surprised her. This was much the same, though the shell was more leather-tough than brittle. As the hatching progressed with one abrupt heave after another, fragments of casing floated off. Roy began to chase them down, like a child chasing butterflies.

Eirika expected to see glimpses of claws, of a tail, of scales or feathers. What she saw through the cracks looked a great deal like pink human skin. Pink skin, and the soft limbs of a human child. And, with a final momentous heave, those limbs broke free of the casing, and the Goddess of the Moon lay entangled in the sleeping hammock.

She was clothed, Eirika realized with a shock. This was _not_ a hatchling newly birthed, but a little girl, the size of a human child of six or seven. She was clothed in scraps of iridescent fabric, and the tendrils of her hair, pale as ashes, floated around her.

Marth grasped one of the support straps on the bulkhead with one hand and reached out with the other hand to steady their passenger, who was still flailing inside of the mesh. The dragon child grasped at his hand- like a newborn baby, thought Eirika. Once the hatchling had something solid to hold, the flailing ceased.

The child's eyelids began to flutter, and then, after a few frantic seconds, the eyes opened, and Eirika saw a flash of silver, the color of a droplet of mercury. Eirika was the witness, not the agent, when the eyes of the newly-awakened goddess looked into the eyes of a human after eleven centuries of sleep.

"Hello, Luna."

That cautiously advanced greeting from Marth caused the child to smile. She emitted a gurgling sound that sounded a little like laughter, then tugged sharply on his hand, bringing it to her face. She nuzzled it, sniffed it, and even- to Eirika's shock- _licked_ the human fingers with lunar dust under their nails.

Eirika, too tired for surprises and yet too surprised to speak, watched wordlessly as the Hero of Space and the Goddess of the Moon shared a moment that recalled the bond of a boy with a new puppy.

"Roy, tell the ground that we'll consume oxygen and water at rates higher than expected," Marth added, as though this were just another technical detail. "They'll notice."

"Yes, sir," said Roy, sounding rather like a cadet thrown unprepared into the field. His hand hovered above the communication button for a moment. "Are you _sure_ we won't be shot after this?"

The happy gurgles issued by the Goddess of the Moon had to serve as their answer.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's Notes: Luna is neither Tiki nor Myrrh nor Fa nor Idoun nor Yune, but is intended as this AU's embodiment of dormant divine female power. None of the canonical little goddesses were an exact fit.


	20. Ex Luna Scientia

_Chapter Twenty: Ex Luna, Scientia_

* * *

Hot running water. Thick bubbles of soap. Shampoo that smelled of lemon and rose oil. These creature comforts were a relief and yet somehow foreign to Eirika now. For days she'd been scrubbing out the dust that'd worked into the quick of her nails and the irritated patches the electrodes had left on her skin were only now beginning to fade. Proper meals and fresh spring water came as an even greater relief to Eirika being after so many days of space food and the over-aerated water on-board their craft.

They'd landed on the steppes with the usual jolt and had been whisked from the Falcon straight to a mobile quarantine unit, from the mobile unit to their current location, known merely as the Receiving Area. None of the masked technicians in hazard suits said a word about the fourth passenger they'd found on _Peace._

Neither did the guests who came to speak to them— doctors and engineers, scientists and fellow pilots, generals and commissioners. Eirika, communicating to them through a panel of glass, felt a little as though she were speaking to people trapped inside the television— Chief Engineer Innes, peppering her with technical questions about the performance of his Falcon III. Professor Saleh, smiling at her through the glass, asking if she was ready to speak to all the world on behalf of its moon. General Selena, asking the same bland questions she always had. Only Ephraim, his eyes bruised and distant, asked in lowered tones as to what she'd seen up there. Asked what she'd _really_ seen, what she'd _really _brought back from the moon.

She wondered now how much the backup commander for _Peace_ had known of the true goals of the mission. He'd known enough that Ephraim couldn't sleep the entire time she was in space, from the looks of things.

Eirika shared Roy's fear that they'd all be eliminated, or at least she initially did. It would have been simple, after all, for the Programme to announce that the rats exposed to lunar samples had died in agony, and to then break the news to the _Peace_ crew that a similar fate no doubt awaited them, to offer them the merciful option of a standard-issue pistol or a packet of pills. But the amount of interest the outside world showed in the immediate future of Major Sieglinde suggested that future contained no poison pills.

"_Herr!_"

"That's right, Luna. Hair."

She turned around to see Roy patting his new pupil on her own head of thick ashen hair.

"Good, Luna."

Roy was making strides in teaching the girl Terran speech; he proved a patient teacher and a kind one, and Eirika supposed that it helped that Roy himself looked so childlike. He seemed more a fellow-friend than an authority figure, at any rate. Though it was Marth that Luna loved most, or so it seemed to Eirika. Luna glanced in Marth's direction whenever Roy or Eirika gave her praise or affection, and the slightest bit of attention from Marth himself sent the little girl into peals of happy noise. Eirika had heard the stories of ducklings and cygnets and even young hawks who hatched in the presence of humans and consequently thought themselves to _be _humans, and on seeing Luna now the old stories stayed in her mind.

_Were they to raise this child as a human, an Earthling?_

Perhaps. There in quarantine, the crew of the _Peace_ mission finally began to meld into one family. Eirika imagined at night that perhaps the "peace" their mission was to bring was truly a matter of stitching together the torn fragments of the world— not a new age, but a resurrection of that earlier era that Roy and Marth now spoke of freely within their isolation. The golden age of peace, in which beasts and men lived among one another, when the "immortals" founded colonies on all the continents of Terra, spreading their knowledge and culture to mortal men.

Until the betrayal- Roy said it was the beasts that betrayed humans, Marth claimed it was the humans who wronged the dragons and laguz- followed by swift and appalling retaliation. Eirika wondered now if both might be true.

Marth had fallen asleep on their communal couch— he and Eirika both had trouble fighting off the desire to sleep for twelve hours or more a day, and in the Receiving Area there was little need to fend off that desire. So Marth slept as he did now, one arm trailing toward the carpet. No longer weightless. Eirika wondered if Marth were glad, after all, for a stay in the enforced quiet of the Receiving Area. When the doors opened to let them out into the world, he'd return to being... what was the phrase she'd heard tossed around the pilots' dormitory during incautious moments? _A living museum display_.

If the doors opened. But in the meantime, Marth slept, Eirika worked on a stack of reports, and Roy tried to teach Luna more Terran words. Until, that is, they heard Marth yawn and stretch, whereupon Luna squealed and hurled herself toward the couch, where she latched onto Marth's arm.

"Life will never be the same for any of us," Pilot 001 said as he accepted Luna's affections.

Marth repeated this over dinner. He and Eirika dined alone, as Roy had gone to his own room to sleep and Luna sat underneath the table, at Marth's feet, chattering to herself.

"I suppose not," Eirika agreed.

"You have your brother for support," Marth said, his blue gaze as striking as ever under the sterile fluorescent lights.

"After this?" Eirika remembered the haunted look in her twin's eyes. "I think... I think the shadow of the moon might have come between us."

"He'll go up two missions from this," Marth said to her, as though it were a peace offering. "Three full days on Luna in the beautiful highlands."

"Will they actually send anyone else now that the goals of _Fire Emblem_ have been achieved?"

"Of course. We have the technology, we have trained crews... we have mountains to climb and lost cities to explore. Not that anyone will be able to boast in public about what they've seen."

"Any more than we can."

"Most assuredly not. If anyone asks you what you saw up there, say you stood in the presence of the gods and leave it at that."

She had questions for him in her heart, about G's goals and Sephiran's goals, but instead she offered up her own little truth.

"You'll never fly again." There was no question about it; the Programme could not afford to lose him in some banal accident with a trainer jet. It couldn't before, and it definitely couldn't now.

"No."

"Does it bother you?"

"Flying used to be a part of the job." He smiled for a moment- that _other_ smile, the one he only showed far from the cameras. "Now, _not_ flying is part of the job. I can't complain."

"Do you mind being..." _A museum display_ was on her lips, but instead she said, "Do you mind being Pilot 001?"

"Somebody had to be. The Programme decided I was the one. _G_ decided I was the one."

"Why was that?"

"I don't know. I've heard the same things as the rest of you- that they liked my background..."

Why _G_ and the rest of them would recruit a child instead of an experienced pilot to serve their purposes, why the Programme was staffed with so many youths who'd spent all their lives surrounded by its mysteries.

What Project _Fire Emblem _required was someone scrubbed free of any natural impulse to say "_I want_," someone- some_thing_- that could be a pilot first and a _human_ second. Someone to be a surrogate for those dragons who remained on earth... someone to be a mirror image of Luna herself.

"Your life will never be your own."

"It hasn't been. It's not as though I know anything different." He sounded almost merry then, but that little frown surfaced a moment later. "Don't feel sorry for me, Eirika. Don't worry about the burdens of being First. It'll be difficult enough on you being Second."

"I'm a younger twin. I'm used to it."

"Are you?" Eirika didn't know what to make of that question, especially not when Marth followed it with, "You have some reports to finish."

"Yes, sir."

Below them Luna still babbled away.

-x-

Well before she finished her reports, with Roy still asleep and Luna gone quiet for a time, Eirika decided to confront her commander about the thing both of them had to discuss and neither of them much wanted to.

"Have the generals talked to you about it?"

She did not explain the nature of It. There was no need.

"Only twice," he said, without looking at her. "Mycen once and the premier himself the next time."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." He looked at her then, peering up through the strands of his untrimmed hair, and she felt the difference in their ages then. Four years might be nothing in a decade's time, but right now, the gap between twenty-four and twenty…

"If not you, it would've been Micaiah. If not me, then Ike, perhaps..."

"They're set on it," Eirika said, as much to reassure herself as to confirm it to him. "We have to decide on a date... they're already planning the celebrations."

"Do you want to tell the generals immediately that you've accepted my proposal of marriage, or would you rather wait until we're out of quarantine?"

"It can wait a few more days," she replied. "Besides, you'll want to ask my brother's blessing."

"I didn't mean to come between you, Eirika. Truly, I didn't. I know how much it hurts…"

And Eirika's heart ached them for him, because he was too young and didn't deserve this either and being First was all he really had.

"It wasn't you. Like I said... I think it's the shadow of the moon that fell between us." She reached for his arm— not like Luna, not in a passion— and slipped her fingers down to enclose his wrist. "We will face the world together."

Marth flashed that strange quick smile at her and the lights flickered. A second later the blast struck, a rolling wave that knocked the pictures off the walls and sent both Marth and Eirika running toward the safety of a doorway. Luna awoke and began to howl and Eirika could hear Roy shouting from his room in the confusion. She could only think it'd been a direct missile strike on Star City, the detonation of a nuclear warhead as great as any Wyvern rocket's payload.

Roy had different ideas when he emerged into his own doorway.

"There was an Ashera rocket fully fueled on the pad awaiting the next mission."

"Two rockets," said Marth, who now had Luna attached to his legs. "They moved another out yesterday for backup."

Eirika looked at Roy, and Roy looked at Marth, and Marth just shook his head. The second explosion, as violent as the first, didn't surprise them at all when it struck; only Luna was caught off-guard by the tumult.

"Sabotage?" Eirika asked when she could speak.

"You might say that."

Three— no, four— heads turned toward the main doorway of the Receiving Area, no longer a sterile portal to a contained zone. The newcomer, dressed in white with a green tail of hair dangling down past his shoulder, was regarding them with a smile born of some preternatural calm.

"I have friends among the Chief Engineers," he said. "A little explosion or two was nothing much to arrange."

Eirika heard the sound coming from deep within Marth's throat. She felt her own instincts telling her to attack this man, but she had nothing— no pistol, no blade, nothing dangerous to throw. Still, it was three against one…

"Simmer down, Marth," said the man in white.

"Who in hell are you?" Marth managed to spit at him.

"Merric never did mention me? Good lad." The man in white smiled again, a more genuine smile— perhaps. "I have many names. One of them is Chief Designer L."

"Is another name of yours 'Minister of Truth?" The words came out of Eirika effortlessly, bypassing any process of rational thought.

He offered a little fluttering bow in her direction.

"Clever girl. I think you may be able to piece this together by the time we're to safety."

"Safety?" It came from Roy.

"That's the plan." L made the gesture of a man jingling automotive keys. "Come on, kids. I'm getting the four of you out of here tonight."

"What about my brother?" asked Eirika. She trusted this man. She shouldn't, yet she did. She _had_ to.

"Already taken care of. Come _on_, kids."

But Eirika and Roy, good pilots in a crisis, were waiting on Marth. He was breathing evenly now, but the fierce gaze he aimed at L wasn't exactly trusting. Wary, and alert, and more than a little angry, but no trust yet.

Luna, though, tugged on Marth's hands, clearly urging him to go to L. Pilot 001 smiled.

"Let's go!"

Five to a car, tires screaming on the pavement in the black night as twin infernos raged on the horizon. As they passed through a familiar world turned alien in one eye-blink, Eirika saw more lights in the sky forming a reassuring pattern. It was, it must be, a squadron of TR-27s leaving Star City one last time.

Eirika thought she saw plane at the front of the formation dip its wings as it passed overhead. Maybe it was a trick of the light through the car window. It didn't matter. She knew it was Ephraim leading them.

**The End**

* * *

And that's it for the longest fanfic I've ever written and likely will write. Yes, it ends with a _Lewyn Ex Machina_. Thanks to everyone still paying attention to this whacked out space saga after all this time. It was really, truly fun.


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